Warning: Malexmale/Incest undertones. Don't like, don't read.
"Look for reflections, in your face
Canine devotion, time can't erase"
(Queens Of The Stone Age, The Lost Art Of Keeping A Secret)
When Sasuke attended the Academy his teachers always talked about Itachi, the best student they ever had.
After the massacre they stopped mentioning him.
After all the younger brother was a top student too, although not enough for them to have the almost ecstatic expression they had when they recalled the elder, the same he has whenever Itachi does something for the first time, in his new life.
He immediately catches up with basic ninja techniques. His muscle memory and his prodigy-like ability is ingrained in every cell of his body, whether he remembers it or not.
As for theoretical notions, Kakashi has been teaching them since he came back, giving him books to read as pastime.
Unbeknownst to Sasuke, Kakashi was already sowing the seed of curiosity.
It is Sasuke who taught Itachi the basics of chakra control.
He was so happy to be able to teach him that he forgot how worried he was that his brother would be a shinobi again.
His childhood dream was coming true. He tells himself that he must not relax and think everything is going to be perfect. Yet he is excited to live and train with his beloved brother who actively seeks him, waiting for him to teach him more, valuing his ability and knowledge.
Not even in his dreams he dared imagine something so perfect.
Itachi is with him and nothing else matters, even if his memory could return anytime.
It is Sasuke who taught Itachi how to control fire, the Uchiha element.
During their childhood the former prodigy had mastered it long before everyone had; their father said it many times, making him feel unworthy because he wasn't as good.
Sasuke doesn't know that Itachi was a prodigy indeed, but he also had been practicing since he learned to walk.
He had to, there was a war going on.
Smoke at daytime and explosions at nighttime: that was the world Fugaku showed him when he first took him to the battlefield. There wasn't a safe place for him anymore since the war was too close to Konoha and everyone who could fight had to defend it.
Mikoto had retired when they got married but when the war started she wore the shinobi gear again, leaving Itachi to an old relative, until a surprise attack almost destroyed their hideout. Then Fugaku decided to take his son with him like he intended to since the start. It was pointless to hide him the truth about the world.
Thus training was the only thing the child could do.
Becoming strong enough to defend himself and his loved ones.
Control himself to control the world around him.
When Sasuke saw Itachi mastering the jutsu again he realized why his father was so proud of his son.
It only took him the time to observe Sasuke's hand seals to perform the jutsu at his first try.
He focused his chakra on his chest and blew steadily, with increasing strength.
The ball of fire was huge and balanced.
It was perfect. Like his brother, who after releasing his first katon turned around and smiled at him, and when the younger praised him –his voice almost broken. Did their father feel this way too? – he minimized his result, praising Sasuke's teaching ability instead.
"You know, being able to do this meant becoming a real member of the Uchiha clan..." Sasuke said, sitting by the river.
"I trained hard for it, but my only result was a messy fire that burned my mouth from the inside. It hurt...but what hurt the most was not being able to do it right, unlike you."
Itachi sat beside him.
"Father kept saying how earlier and better you mastered it."
Itachi wanted to ask him why Sasuke didn't ask him instead, but only someone with no memory could think of such a stupid question, a voice inside him screamed, and he felt guilty because he felt that his brother had suffered and he had done nothing to ease his pain.
"Eventually I made it and...finally father praised me. He even looked at me like…"
"…almost like he looked at you," he muttered, remembering his happiest memory of his father.
It was the first time he spoke about it. He would have never said to someone else.
It was a miracle that he was given Itachi back, to tell him.
"How did I look at you?" Itachi asked.
Since he was back Itachi had bursts of random questions.
Even if he was calm and polite, there were times when despite his self-restraint and his vow to never upset Sasuke with thorny questions, these came out anyway.
It was uncharacteristical for someone like him. Yet it wasn't for someone with no memory, trying to understand the world around him, trying to understand the one that was his world.
"I don't know what you mean," Sasuke replied.
"You didn't look at me much" is not an acceptable reply. His brother had reasons not to and Sasuke knew it very well.
Itachi couldn't remember but his heart told him that he had always looked at his brother when he didn't notice.
"Did you resent me?"
Sasuke was taken aback by his question, just like that day.
Even their position was similar. Until Itachi moved behind Sasuke, kneeling with his arms encircled around the younger.
His warmth made Sasuke feel safe; he reveled in Itachi's embrace, his eyes closed, feeling like a child again, cradled by the gentle waves below them.
"Look down, Sasuke."
Itachi's voice was calm but firm enough to shake him out of his reverie.
"Look at your reflection, then look at mine."
In the past he had looked at his reflection and seen his brother's face. He had been so desperate to irrationally dive in the lake, chasing after Itachi's image.
It was dark and cold down there. The lake had seemed to swallow him, just like Itachi had swallowed everything he had, everything he was, spitting him out, only him, like garbage.
It was dark and cold up there when he came out or the water, almost drowned.
He didn't want to die. Not yet.
Not after having killed him.
"There is a strong resemblance between you and I…"
Itachi brushed the boy's cheekbones and face, descending to his shoulder.
"But there are differences as well."
He caressed his spiky hair.
"We are not the same person. We don't have to be. You are Sasuke. You trained hard to master this technique because you wanted to keep up with the brother you defined a prodigy, but you didn't realize that in the eyes of your comrades and friends you were a prodigy too."
Sasuke leaned on the elder's chest.
"Our father surely knew that. If someone doesn't express their feelings it doesn't mean they don't feel anything. It just means that they don't know how to do it."
When Itachi tenderly stroked his cheek saying: "If I were a father I would be happy to have a son like you. I'm sure our father felt the same," remembering that Fugaku's last words were words of love and care for him -not disappointment, not indifference- Sasuke fought not to cry.
Even with no memory Itachi was right, as always.
Yet he didn't need to remember. Neither their father's last words, neither his death, by his very hands.
The new team Kakashi, informally renamed team Uchiha despite him being the leader, soon becomes one of Konoha's best assets.
The copy nin's detached reasoning and endless arsenal of techniques and Sasuke's unpredictability combined with the abilities he acquired with Orochimaru and after, are not their only strengths: Itachi can't use doujutsu but he is not weak at all.
In fact, he is the perfect shinobi. The discipline he has been instilled since his first years has not disappeared. Neither has his strategical ability, impressive even with no memory.
His suggestions come from his smart and extremely observant nature, along with his only consciously forgotten experience. He is particularly good at reading people, uncannily seeing beyond the exterior. Even better than Kakashi, who reads them out of pure logic.
His prowess in close range combat qualifies him as the close range specialist of the team.
Being initially supposed to rely on it -before they realized how easy it was for him to use chakra - Sasuke considered asking Rock Lee or Maito Gai for help, but on second thought he dismissed the idea.
He didn't want such noisy people around.
He didn't want too many people around his brother, spending time with him, teaching him things that he could teach him as well. His sharingan had memorized their techniques anyway.
For the same reason Sasuke doesn't tell Itachi that he also has an affinity with water.
Kakashi copied enough techniques for that element, they don't need new skills for now.
With time he'll have Suigetsu train him. In the meantime, Sasuke will teach him everything he knows.
He loves doing it. He becomes familiar with the mixture of pride for his accomplishments and longing because he's such a fast learner that he'll soon no longer need him.
Like the first time Itachi disappears in a flock of crows.
He just learned substitution jutsu but he decided to crows instead because there were a few perched on the nearby trees.
When Sasuke explained that he used to do that in the past, he smiled, saying that it made sense because the crows took care of him while he wasn't able to do it himself.
The crows guided him towards saving the baby.
The crows guided him towards Konoha.
The crows guided him towards his humanity. Towards himself.
Towards Sasuke, who can't stop fearing that he will disappear, abandoning him again.
He never says it out loud but the screams in his mind are so loud that Itachi hears them; so he keeps him close, asking him explanations, doing anything to make his brother feel useful, valued, loved.
The young Uchiha works hard because despite being his temporary teacher he still needs his acknowledgment. Even though the elder expresses it now more than he ever did, he works hard not to lose his admiration.
Itachi is strong, fast, smart, deadly.
Itachi is perfect.
Every time they spar Sasuke is amazed.
He prides himself to be stronger than most. His movements are fast and precise, his attitude provocative, his posture intimidating. He likes to appear more confident than he really is, because despite knowing the truth, despite having trained harder than anyone, deep inside he can't forget that he's no longer the weak child that wasn't worth killing.
Itachi doesn't need to show confidence, he doesn't need to intimidate.
He is confident yet calm. He is intimidating yet his posture is not threatening.
He moves as fast and precisely as him, but more gracefully.
He doesn't flaunt his strength. Everything he does, from fighting to throwing multiple kunai, is fluid and natural as breathing.
Like Sasuke, Itachi too is only allowed on missions within the Land of Fire.
Both brothers cannot work without Kakashi's supervision, as the copy nin is the only other sharingan user.
Especially the older Uchiha, the Council having decided that he is an even bigger, albeit latent threat.
The rare times that other teams need Sasuke's eyes they split up and the boy is supervised by Kurenai while Yamato replaces him.
No matter how high is their success rate, he is still on probation and Itachi's position is uncertain.
Not for Konoha, but the Council is wary of the Uchiha brothers.
They don't approve of Itachi being appointed shinobi again.
In spite of disclosing the truth, in spite of having his name cleared, some of them still considered him a mass murderer and a terrorist.
Old people are hard to change. Especially Oonoki. They shouldn't trust a member of Akatsuki, he said. Even if their countries had required their services on more than one occasion, Tsunade never forgot to mention.
When Konoha elders Koharu and Homura were exiled for the Uchiha massacre, they sought asylum in the Land of Earth, where they rubbed off on the local Daimyo their hostility towards the brothers and Tsunade, described as a weak ruler who wanted to change what had worked for generations.
Their arguments made sense for the Daimyo, an old man just like the Tsuchikage, who had been touched by Gaara's words during the war, even considering them, but once he was back in his office he had returned to his old habits.
The Raikage was not against change in itself: he was against Uchiha Sasuke thus he didn't trust Itachi.
According to him it was an understatement to define the older Uchiha a bad influence for the younger.
Sasuke was insane and it was his brother's fault. He had spent years under Orochimaru, he had recruited a team of unstable juvenile delinquents, all experiments subjects like him. He had kidnapped and tried to kill his brother Killer B and they all remembered what he had done during their meeting. Or maybe they forgot; after all, unlike him, they didn't lose an arm back then.
Sasuke had gone on a rampage on Itachi's name more than once. Now that they were together who knew what they might come up with.
He held Tsunade in high esteem and he trusted her judgment. If she assured that Itachi was trustworthy he believed her word and her good faith. Yet, he didn't trust him, just like he didn't trust his brother. Just like he had never trusted every other Uchiha he had encountered in the past. To him they were all a bunch of egotistical megalomaniacs.
The Mizukage didn't have anything against the two brothers, but her attention was more focused on the changes she had to operate in her country.
It was consistent with their former isolationist policy: her own people came first, she always said.
Her first duty was towards them, after years of injustice and violence both against outsiders and their own shinobi. The spectre of the Bloody Mist, their Anbu trained to kill each other as their final test, was too visible. The old rulers had died but the victims' relatives wanted someone to pay for those crimes, even though there was no one left.
Her predecessors would have held a symbolic trial with the execution of random scapegoats.
She didn't want to start a new era by using a cruel old method, so she was trying to ease her people, giving honors and benefits to the victims' relatives, shifting everyone's attention to the positive future she was building with them, instead of their terrible past, but it was a slow process, full of false steps and relapses.
To her the two Uchiha were just one more problem she didn't need.
The Council included the Samurai Land too, since they took part in the war like everyone else. They never spoke much and they always supported the strongest party.
Therefore, there were only Tsunade, the promoter of change, and Gaara, the champion of second chances, to defend the brothers.
The Senju Princess support wasn't just made of heartfelt speeches and heated defenses against those who spoke ill about her protegés. She regularly sent reports about Itachi's physical and mental health, his and Sasuke's missions and all sorts of information that could change their minds or at least keep them quiet.
She promised that she would ensure them safety and justice.
She promised to them both, to herself and to her beloved Dan.
He would be proud of her, she told him once, sitting by his grave, a jug of sake and two glasses in front of her.
The Alliance was a good mean to achieve peace and transparency through the discussion of every important matter together, so that there won't be Uchiha massacres or Roots or Bloody Mists anymore.
Yet it was frustrating to deal with its members. Too often she had to restrain herself from flipping the table and those obtuse old men all at once.
Nevertheless there was no choice but to play by the rules of the Council that Gaara and her strongly promoted.
There was a lot to do, if they wanted to change the world for real.
It's easy to fall into a routine, even more so when it's made of heartwarming habits.
Even more so for Sasuke, who got used to everything.
He got used to ignore people suddenly shutting up as the Uchiha survivor passed by.
He got used to hide his pain and live as normally as he could so that he wouldn't be pitied.
He got used to conceal his loneliness because a real Uchiha wouldn't seek comfort, only strength to obtain revenge.
Besides, he lost the one he would have sought comfort from.
He lost him twice.
He got used to wake up and go to sleep in a lonely apartment that didn't feel like home; to the dim candlelight in Orochimaru's hideouts, to be exposed to elements while traveling with Taka.
He didn't feel the cold or the rain. He only focused on his goal.
When he returned he got used once again to a house, duties, comrades.
A part of him wasn't even there: it was still in that cave where he had fought beside Itachi.
It was still looking up, towards the light where his brother had dissolved, even though it had faded long since.
He got used to take care of a dog. He was good with animals: pets, shinobi or summon animals, relating to them was easy for him.
They were able to sense his feelings without him having to talk.
There was no need for verbose explanation with them; all they needed were clear, simple gestures.
When Sasuke is away Shiro spends most of the time at Aki's house, only to rush back when the Uchiha calls him. Sometimes, when he sleeps in his favourite spot, he opens one eye in perfect timing with the door, and it's Sasuke who reaches out for him, petting his head and muttering that dogs are supposed to greet humans, not the other way round.
Not that he minds: Shiro is not his subordinate. He's his friend.
Friends understand when their friends are sad and need time alone because they're missing the family they've lost.
Sasuke understands Shiro. He is alone just like him.
Now Itachi is back and his house is a home again.
Everything is new and familiar at the same time, just like his brother.
Before the elder was employed as a shinobi again, he did all the chores and cooked.
When Sasuke came home he always welcomed him in, Shiro coming along, wagging his tail.
That's how it feels to have a home; even Shiro sensed it.
Since he too started working they cook and clean together, each one trying to ease the other's tasks.
Now that they're together everything is a pretext to be together and talk or just stay, content, silently enjoying the other's company.
Returning from a mission they met Naruto's team in the Hokage's office.
When they proposed to go out for dinner Itachi declined, saying he was tired, urging Sasuke to go.
He wanted Sasuke to spend some time with his friends without him around.
He didn't want to prevent his brother to have a life of his own.
Sasuke accepted but when Team 10 tagged along and Chouji started bickering with Naruto about where to eat, he got bored and decided to go home.
He didn't feel like eating ramen and he didn't eat yakiniku anyway.
He wanted to have dinner with Itachi. He wanted to spent time with Itachi.
He doesn't expect to open the door and find no one welcoming him.
He spots Shiro's head peeking from the hole in the garden wall, before returning to Aki's place.
He takes off his shoes and puts them beside Itachi's.
Upstairs, the bathroom light is on and the water is running.
Inside, Itachi is standing in front of the mirror, naked.
Other than a vague shadow, before Sasuke found him he didn't know how he looked like, as the farmers' only mirror got broken during the accident.
He's so concentrated on staring at his own image that only when his brother's reflection appears on the glass surface he acknowledges his presence.
"Sasuke? Are you alright? Did something happen?"
He asks, quickly shoving his musings aside to tend to his brother.
Nothing is more important than Sasuke.
The boy must not suffer, the voice inside him said.
"Don't worry," Sasuke reassures him just as quickly, "Those idiots in Team 10 tagged along and everyone was making a fuss for the place to eat. I got bored and headed home, that's all."
Relieved, Itachi wraps a towel around his waist.
"In this case, welcome home, Sasuke. There's plenty of food in the kitchen."
Sasuke's affection for him is similar to the one animals and children feel. They constantly want to be around the one they love, never having enough, never getting tired of them, never in need of alone time.
What an endearing creature, Itachi thinks, feeling slightly guilty because even if he can't remember he knows that his brother has lived without him for too long.
So long that while his friends seek one another, he only seeks him.
"You can take a bath first," he says, pointing his finger at the bath tub.
"What about you?" Sasuke asks.
"I'll take it later" he replies.
Sasuke undresses and starts washing himself. Itachi asks the details of the argument and the younger obliges.
This is what it feels to have a home.
When he enters the tub he notices that Itachi is standing in front of the mirror again.
"Did I have scars, Sasuke?" the elder asks,"I have always been a shinobi but I don't have any..."
His body was pristine, except for the spiraling tattoo on his upper arm.
Nothing that could trigger any memory, he thinks.
Even though the tattoo alone, with all it represents, would be enough of a trigger.
The young Uchiha is taken aback by the question.
There were times, when Itachi was already an Anbu, that he came home bloodied and bruised, but the blood was almost never his.
One time in particular, Sasuke remembers having barged into the bathroom. Itachi was hunched in front of the mirror, holding a little jar of salve. He had no shirt on; his back was blue and red, full of cuts and bruises.
His right eye was swollen and so his upper lip.
Seeing his big brother's pretty face so marred, Sasuke felt terrible. Instinctively he rushed to hug him.
Only when he hissed, Sasuke realized that he must have hurt his brother.
Itachi ruffled his hair, with a tired smile, when he apologized, asking if he could help him apply the salve.
The child was happy to be useful for his brother, who was happy to focus on something good for a while.
Something worth fighting for.
He didn't let Sasuke see him injured again.
The boy didn't have to see his reality; the classified missions, the assassinations in cold blood, the beatings and tortures they were subjected to, if caught by their enemies.
Just like that day, when he managed to escape, unlike one of his comrades, left behind because he was too wounded to make it.
Sasuke ignores what kind of training his brother did under the man who called himself Uchiha Madara, or what kind of battles he fought in Akatsuki.
What he knows, he doesn't want to say.
"Your right arm should have burn scars after being hit by my katon. Your whole body should have electric burns from my Kirin. Your left thigh should have a large scar because of my giant shuriken. When I stabbed your chest and abdomen it only was a genjutsu instead...".
Sasuke is glad that Itachi came back with no scars because he feels less guilty of having hurt his brother during their fight, without seeing the truth.
He almost wishes that the Anbu tattoo on the elder's arm, a reminder of his Anbu days, a reminder of the massacre he was forced to perpetrate, was gone too.
Itachi sees the storm in his brother's eyes and internally curses his need to understand, to know things.
Nothing is more important than Sasuke, he repeats to himself again.
The boy must not suffer: this is the only thing he needs to know.
"Never mind, Sasuke," he says, reaching for a yukata, "Stay as long as you like. I'll go make dinner."
Sasuke is not sure about the reason why he asked Itachi to stay and bathe with him.
Maybe it's the way his brother minimized his question despite having been so absorbed, trying to squeeze an answer out of his mirror image.
Maybe it's because this was supposed to be his brother's relaxing moment.
Maybe it's because chatting in the bathroom with his brother triggered other childhood memories, this time happy ones, of the many baths they took together, of how he never wanted to get out of the water, of the time took his dinosaur plush with him and then he got worried because it looked sick, soaked wet as it was.
The water level rises as Itachi joins him.
The bathtub is large; even if they are no longer children they fit comfortably.
Sasuke tells him the episodes he just remembered. Itachi smiles, his arms leaning on the external rim, occasionally tilting his head back, only to return on his brother's words.
His look is so focused, so intense that in Sasuke's vision the bathroom's walls blur as if they disappeared and were replaced by trees, as if the ceiling were transformed in a blue sky and they floated in an airy sea of clouds.
"I'm making dinner ok? You stay here...niisan."
He says, clumsily getting out of the tub, feeling lightheaded and confused, as if he were under a spell.
A spell caused by Itachi's beauty.
Sasuke never cared about such things. Faces and bodies were irrelevant for an avenger.
Only strength mattered.
He had been told he was attractive but to him it meant nothing.
When he looked at the mirror he saw his resemblance to his mother. And to Itachi.
He looked a lot like him: same high cheekbones and straight thin nose, same lips, not too plump and not too thin. Same eyes, although his brother's eyelashes were long and almost feminine.
Same facial shape, although his brother's skin tone, just like his hair color, was warmer, more balanced and harmonious, unlike Sasuke, whose skin was paler and whose hair darker.
He just wasn't as perfect as him. Not in appearance, not in every other thing.
Sasuke didn't like looking at his reflection because he looked like a bad copy of Itachi.
He didn't like looking at his reflection because he saw him. He saw them.
His mother's sweet smile. His brother's penetrating look, that could read every single line of his soul, while he couldn't read anything of his,believing everything Itachi wanted him to believe.
He didn't like looking at his reflection because it reminded him of what he lacked. Of what he lost.
Of what was taken away from him.
There was no beauty in it.
Nevertheless he always thought that his brother was beautiful, even when he revealed to be a monster on the inside, disguised as a perfect creature.
When Sasuke saw him on the throne at the Uchiha hideout, despite the hate he felt, despite the anger, he saw how fine his features were.
It felt good to mess them up, twisting them with pain.
It felt good to slash and pierce and burn his long slender limbs. Until he got to know the truth.
Then it felt like a sacrilege to have marred that ethereal sick beauty that had sacrificed everything for him.
It felt like a blasphemy to see him maimed by Kabuto's attacks, when he met his Edo Tensei form, when he had his eyes yet he could see so little of him, only that he was perfect despite the cracks and the eye, lost to Izanami. As if he hadn't lost everything already.
It felt like a miracle to see him again in that farm.
It feels like safety, like family, to see him everyday, alive and healthy, casually taking his shirt off when they spar, just like he does, no longer concealing his soul under the Anbu uniform or the Akatsuki cloak.
Sasuke has always been aware of Itachi's stunning beauty but now he felt it on a deeper level.
He felt it like the water he was floating in.
Drowning in.
He felt it on a physical and at the same time spiritual level.
Like a call, pushing him towards the elder's throat, exposed as he tilted his head back; towards his chest going up and down as he breathed; towards his broad shoulders and his arms, muscles twitching as he leaned on the tub rim. Towards his chiseled abdomen, his protruding hipbones and his long legs.
Itachi was so beautiful that Sasuke wanted to touch him.
In a way he never did to anyone.
In a way that has nothing to do with being brothers.
It's not just physical attraction, that stupid impulse that makes people weak and mindless.
Sasuke knows it's different than that. He is different than that. Itachi is different than that.
Sasuke wants to reach Itachi's soul through his body.
A/N: the underlying theme for this chapter is reflections. Sasuke looking at his own and seeing Itachi's in the past, Sasuke looking at himself in the present, and seeing Itachi because he's there for real. Itachi with no memory looking at his reflection and trying to understand things from it, instead seeing Sasuke, the only aspect of his past life he's sure of...and so on.
This Itachi with no memory is less burdened by guilt and suffering so he's more open, yet remaining observant and calm. This means also physically. He takes off his clothes as they spar, he stands naked in front of Sasuke because they're brothers and he behaves with innocent and pure familiarity, which Sasuke sees as such.
Until he feels something different...
I think their feelings for each other are complex and difficult to define. Their obsession for each other is well known. Their extreme love for each other, taking different forms according to their personalities, is well known too. In my opinion, in this story, that is fictional and unrelated to real life, physical attraction is just another aspect of their love. They have been deprived of each other for so long that they missed a part of their soul without the other, and they love each other in every possible way when they are together again. This is how I see them.