Thoughts:
I lied in my last author's note. It's Fugaku that spills the plot to Mikoto in Chapter 8, she doesn't confront Itachi about it until chapter 10. Got the order flipped around in my head, apologies. I think I need to work on my pacing. The last fan-novel I did moved too fast, this one in hindsight might be too slow. Practice is what fanfic is for, so, well...oops.
Mikoto waited patiently for Itachi to return from his patrol on Konoha's massive walls, whenever that might be. The start and end time of the shifts were slightly randomized every day, to lessen the chance an intruder would be able to make use of a stolen patrol schedule. It also made Itachi extraordinarily difficult to catch upon his arrival, since he seemed to make a conscious effort to avoid everyone but Sasuke, and then disappeared behind his locked door until mealtime. She threw on a jacket and gloves, and pulled the old broom out of the tool shed to begin sweeping the front walk free of leaves as slowly as possible. The only way he could avoid her now was by vaulting over the wall.
Her fingers were tending toward numb by the time her eldest son finally stepped around the bend, his gear bag slung over his shoulder, and his eyes fixed on the stones. She paused in her sweeping to smile at him. "How was your day?" she asked.
"Uneventful," he said blandly, making to brush past her with the barest minimum of courtesy.
"I ran into Kakashi-san at the park today," she said to his back. That got a reaction, although not much of one. His sandals scraped on the stones, as he turned to look back at her.
"And I think you know what I mean when I say 'ran into'," she said, with a hint of a challenge in her voice.
"I do not," he answered, still with that flat, opaque tone. "I haven't spoken to him today. Please excuse me; I'd like to wash up before dinner." He turned on his heels, and continued walking briskly to the entrance of the house.
She hefted the broom, and went after him, taking out some of her frustration with him on the undeserving door. Did he really think she was as blandly passive as the face she put on for his father? He knew she had been...or maybe still was...a shinobi. She slammed the door behind her, and jogged a little to catch up; he was very tall for his age, and had longer legs than she did. He'd taken the covered walkway outside of the house, and that was where she caught up with him. She stopped short when she realized what he was staring at.
Sasuke was dangling by his ankle, like a plucked chicken, from the large tree in the yard, his belt and pouch of practice kunai sitting in front of Naruto. His face was already very red, but it intensified when he registered that Itachi was here to witness this humiliation.
"Get me out of this," Sasuke growled at his grinning captor.
"Not until you admit I'm awesome," Naruto answered smugly, from his seat in the tree roots. He was resting his hands behind his head, and looking more relaxed than anyone could possibly be in this cold. He smiled even wider at Mikoto and Itachi when he noticed he had an audience.
Mikoto scowled at them, and put her free hand on her hip. "Naruto, let him down before he passes out—and gently. A broken wrist is a much bigger problem for him than it is for you. Sasuke..."
"Environmental awareness. Yeah, yeah, Mom, I know," he said in a small voice, as he twisted forlornly in the wind.
Naruto disappeared into the arborvitae, and fiddled with the rope's hidden anchor. He stood, and put some slack into it with a grunt of effort, inching Sasuke down as slowly as he could. He stopped when Sasuke's head was a hand's width from the ground, and his forearms were just resting in the grass. "Come on, say it," he whispered out of the corner of his mouth.
"You...stink," Sasuke whispered back.
"Naruto..." Mikoto said, warningly, taking a few steps forward. He grinned at her, and lowered Sasuke the rest of the way down, who landed in an undignified tangle.
"Hi!" Naruto said brightly, tossing the rope aside, to let Sasuke cut himself free. "You must be Itachi!"
"Uzumaki Naruto-kun," Itachi said. "Your reputation has preceded you."
Naruto stomped up to the lip of the covered porch, looking insulted. "It did not," he said.
"Do you even know what that means, you retard?" Sasuke interjected, as he sawed at the rope with a dull kunai from the pouch in front of him.
Itachi regarded the huffing boy with cool curiosity. "It means 'to come before', and is certainly no insult. I mention this only because you apparently outran an ANBU sentinel, when he caught you packing the theater ventilation system with week-old fish heads."
"Yeah, well, that jerk owner had it coming," Naruto explained, utterly unrepentant. "Last week he tossed me out right at the beginning of Curse of the Mind Leeches, even though I really bought a ticket that time. Snatched it right out of my hand when I showed it to him, and nobody chased him down for stealing from me."
Sasuke was still struggling with the rope and blunt blade. Itachi took notice of his difficulties, and drew out a kunai from his holster to toss it casually in the direction of the tree trunk, without taking his eyes off Naruto. It landed with a thunk above his brother's head. Sasuke reach up, pulled it out, and mumbled his thanks.
"If I may ask..." Itachi said. "How did you manage it?"
"Nobody wanted them anyway, so I just waited until it got dark, and jumped into the dumpster behind the fishmonger's with a garbage bag, and—"
"I meant outrun ANBU."
"Are you kidding? I do it, like, all the time!" Naruto declared proudly. "Nobody knows Konoha like I do, and grownups are too big to fit through half my secret shortcuts. It got a lot easier after the Old Man told them they're not allowed to throw stuff at me. But I didn't think that was fair, so I said they could use those needle thingies if they wanted to; those don't hurt very much." Naruto paused and rubbed at his nose. "Man, our ANBU guys really suck. Well, mostly it's Doggy-face. Jeez is he slow. When I'm Hokage, they'll have to shape up, or I'm gonna fire 'em all."
On the porch, Mikoto cocked her head in thought. ANBU sentinels had better things to do than chase after seven-year-old vandals. And as she'd just learned, Kakashi wore a canine mask, although he was only one of several among Konoha's ANBU that did so. Maybe this was his slightly twisted way of spending some time with his sensei's son. Having been made a genin so young, Kakashi didn't exactly have a lot of experience in playground games. But...what they were doing could be called tag—if you stretched the definition to include bladed weapons and possible prison time.
"Hound," Itachi corrected mildly, confirming Mikoto's supposition. "And there are not many who would feel the need to level the field, when being pursued by ANBU agents."
"Why not?" Naruto asked, genuinely curious. "It's more fun that way."
Itachi looked intently at him, as if prying for the sarcasm that ought to have been interlaced with such a statement. After some consideration, he decided to take it at face value. Correctly, he judged Naruto to be unfamiliar with such a concept. "I cannot imagine. They obviously do not have your well-developed sense of fair play."
Sasuke had finally succeeded in freeing himself from the thick coil of rope, and stood up, dusting some crumbled leaves from his pants. He cleared his throat, and looked sheepishly at Itachi. "He totally got lucky with that, you know," he mumbled, and took a few steps toward the porch, intending to return the kunai.
Naruto's face went stiff, and he snapped around. "No, crap, don't—" Sasuke looked down as an almost invisible tripwire bit into shin. "Move," he finished lamely.
Simultaneously, there was a clicking sound from the walls, and dozen slender bamboo stakes came sailing toward Sasuke. He yelped, and dove to the ground, rolling out of the impact radius.
Before Mikoto could react, Itachi raised his head, and exhaled sharply through pursed lips. She barely had time to notice the ends of the projectiles were fitted with suction cups, rather than something actually dangerous, before they were completely incinerated by the ball of flame. In hindsight, Itachi's instinctive reaction was probably overkill.
There was a breath of silence. "THAT WAS FREAKING AWESOME!" Naruto shrieked at him, as the ashes of his makeshift arrowheads drifted away on the wind. "I didn't see you use any handsigns or anything!"
Sasuke picked himself up off the ground, again very red in the face. "That didn't count either," he muttered. "Mom told you a million times not to set trip-lines in the house."
Naruto ignored him, all of his attention on Itachi. Sasuke scowled. He wasn't used to being ignored by Naruto. "Finally, a worthy opponent!" Naruto said, sliding his feet wide, and jabbing his finger in the general direction of Itachi's chest. "I challenge you to—"
"I am a jōnin. That would be unwise."
"Right, right, your mom doesn't like us sparring all out in the house anyway," Naruto said, favoring the tight-lipped Mikoto with a toothy, and somewhat apologetic smile. "How about you teach me how to do that instead?"
Sasuke sniffed, and crossed his arms over his chest. "Lost cause," he muttered sourly.
"No," Itachi, predictably, answered.
"Pfft. You are one-hundred percent as lame of a big brother as Sasuke said you were," Naruto said.
Sasuke's eyed flicked back and forth between Naruto and Itachi. "What? I never—" he said, horrified.
Naruto wrapped his arm around Sasuke's shoulders, intensifying the other boy's expression of mortification. "Naw, but you were thinking it. Well, whatever. We can figure it out ourselves if your big sister is too busy brushing her hair, and doing her makeup and stuff, to teach us ninjutsu. Come on, Sasuke," he said, with finality, and steered him towards the front door.
Sasuke pushed Naruto away with a huff, and started towards the door on his own. "Seriously, if you don't take that back about my brother I'm going to hurt you." Naruto grinned and trotted after him, completely ignoring the less-than-serious threat, and launching into a grand plan to master the gōkakyū no jutsu before the weekend.
Mikoto simply stood there, her mouth hanging open, and her irritation with Itachi momentarily forgotten. Yes, he did wear his hair long (because he couldn't be bothered to cut it regularly), and, yes, he had inherited her long, luxuriant eyelashes, but...nobody teased Itachi that way. Ever. The other children had been too terrified of him, and his family much too formal, and even his sensei Shisui's brotherly ribbing had tapered off around when Itachi made chūnin. All of this had apparently washed over Naruto, who, rather like his mother, did not seem to know fear.
She glanced over at a curious noise. Itachi hadn't used the opportunity of her distraction to disappear, as she would have expected, and was still standing by the steps into the garden with one hand on a beam. Itachi was...Itachi was laughing?
On any other young man, the shallow crescent of his lips, and faint quivering of his shoulders, would barely have registered as a response, but it was more mirth than she had seen out of Itachi in a long, long time. So long she couldn't even recall what it sounded like. She propped her broom up against the wall when Itachi turned fully to look at her, still smiling faintly. "He is brave," Itachi said. "And for the village idiot, remarkably cunning. To be honest, I think I would have found it a challenge to evade even an apathetic ANBU agent at seven years old. I'm surprised he lost second place to that Aburame in the class rankings."
Mikoto folded her arms over her chest, looking at the remnants of the snare trap he'd constructed. It was quite clever, using the cover of the long ornamental grass to conceal the mechanism. "He didn't lose anything to the Aburame," she said. "There wasn't a contest. He's dead last."
Itachi's eyebrows elevated slightly. "The son of the Yellow Flash, who is skilled enough to evade not only his chūnin teachers but an ANBU sentinel, is dead last?"
"Yes."
"Ah," he said. "Since I cannot imagine every one of the Academy instructors degenerated into a drooling idiot since I attended, I believe I now understand why you've tucked him under your wing. He seems to have potential."
"You didn't seem so pleased about that the last time Naruto came up in conversation," Mikoto pointed out. 'Displeased' was an understatement.
Itachi shrugged. "I was misinformed. Rumor was unkind—he doesn't seem to be the sort of monster half of Konoha assumes he is."
"You can decide that after meeting him once?" Mikoto asked. She was getting more confused by the second.
"Sasuke likes him," he said, and his voice went strangely tight. "He ought to have a few good friends outside the clan."
She didn't know what he meant by that. A reference to her relationship to Kushina, perhaps? Yes, that was probably it. It was a good thing to form bonds with people that didn't necessarily think and act like you. It was a rather quick reversal, but perhaps what Fugaku had said during their heated discussion the night of Itachi's return had mollified him, although she couldn't imagine what that might be. Naruto was still as much of a jinchūriki as he had been last week. Unless this didn't really have much to do with a threat Naruto posed, but rather...
Her train of thought was derailed, as it suddenly occurred to her where it was the younger boys were probably going. Sasuke had managed his very first jutsu a few days ago, having finally gotten the hang of chakra redirection with her advice. It was a big step from a simple bunshin to one of the signature Uchiha fire techniques, but she was afraid Sasuke was precocious enough to manage it.
"Itachi...would you do me a favor, and go with them to the pond, just this once?" she asked. "Sasuke already knows the handsigns inside out, and with Naruto urging him on, I'm afraid they might actually make good on that threat to master the gōkakyū. You know his control isn't very good yet. I'm afraid he could really hurt himself without at least some guidance."
What was left of the laughter faded completely. "That is traditionally a father-son activity. Forbid him from trying until Father is ready to teach him."
"With Naruto in the mix 'forbidding him' will do precisely nothing...please?" she implored. "You know how much he idolizes you—he might actually pay attention to the precautionary steps, if you tell him what they are. Train with him just for today? He's probably asked you every other day since he started at the Academy."
"You could instruct him yourself, could you not? I assume you have enough familiarity with the technique," he added archly.
Mikoto sighed. That old frustration was bubbling up again. "Why do you do that?" she asked. "Always push him away? He's starting to think you don't want him to become as great as you are."
"Then he is correct," Itachi said evenly, making Mikoto draw back in surprise. "Perhaps I misread your intentions, but I believed we were of the same mind in this, if nothing else."
She opened her mouth, and rapidly shut it again, as the deeper meaning of his words became clear. Despite all the acclaim to which he was accustomed, one thing Itachi had never become was conceited. The way he said such a thing, it was…almost sad, not spiteful. Sasuke had the same potential Fugaku had recognized in Itachi, and his elder brother could see it even if their father could not.
And there was a reason Itachi would wish to shelter the boy from such attention, just like she had, whether she was fully conscious of her efforts or not. "Yes. We are," she said softly, bowing her head.
Itachi had been accepted into the Academy just as the last of her kunoichi's fire had guttered out, and she finally started to believe the insidious lies she had been fed her entire life. An Uchiha wife was obedient to her husband in all things. She had acquiesced to the unbelievably harsh training regimen Fugaku had imposed on the five-year-old Itachi, stood silent again as he was propelled at breakneck speed to graduation at seven, and still did not protest when he was granted special authorization to begin taking C-rank missions outside of the village at eight. He was a prodigy, yes. But he had still been a little boy without the power to refuse his father anything.
His first kill was at eight years old. Eight. A genin from Iwa whose mission was to escort the merchant baron it had been Shisui and Itachi's mission to arrest. Iwa ninja were legendarily stubborn. The merchant's young guardsman had ignored his teacher's warning to be doubly wary of anyone from Konoha with a blue star on his sleeve, and charged them anyway. Itachi's kunai found his throat before he could take five full steps, guided by the almost prescient power of that third tomoe. The motion was probably drill-perfect, all reaction, no contemplation. Draw and release. The jōnin sensei of the dying teenager had cursed him, and all Konoha shinobi, as heartless monsters, for who but a monster would make such a perfect assassin of a little child?
Shisui had incapacitated the remaining Iwa shinobi, and delivered the traitorous weapons dealer to the authorities, Itachi mutely trailing in his wake. They returned without further incident, and the mission was marked a success. Shisui guided his student home, stony-faced as a proper shinobi should be, but once Mikoto had him alone, he could no longer hold back the torrent of self-reproach. It was too early and too much. That night was the closest Shisui had ever come to open conflict with the Clan Head, and he was so loyal he would have sworn under oath the sky was green, if Fugaku told him it was so.
Itachi had shut himself in his room, and refused to speak to anyone for a full day. She had heard him sobbing through the locked door when she passed, and her whole being had wanted to take him in her arms, and brush those tears away. He wouldn't let her then, and had never done so since. That mission had almost broken Itachi, and the words of the Iwa jōnin must have haunted him to this day. It had lain in the shadows of her mind for a long time. How she should have said something, convinced her husband to allow their son the time to let his fragile young heart catch up to his talented hands.
He had long ago ceased to be afraid of his father for his own sake, but it lingered on behalf of Sasuke. He didn't want his little brother's soul stained with murder before he had grown up enough to absorb the consequences. He was right, but there was room for compromise. "I understand your rationale, but please, show him enough of the technique to allow him to practice without hurting himself," Mikoto said. "When your father does find out he's mastered the gōkakyū...between the two of us, we should be able to keep the pace of his training to reasonable limits, and keep him from graduating early. It's not the same as when you were a genin. Konoha is almost at full strength again. The need for new shinobi isn't as pressing."
"We?" he said, skeptical.
"We," she said firmly.
There it was again. A shadow of a smile. "I'll have Sasuke back in time for dinner," he said, and moved to leave her. He stopped in the doorframe on his way to the back of the house. "And Mother...thank you."
