Cradling a bouquet arranged of various purple flowers, Itachi walked the stone paths of the cemetery like a lost soul searching for their loved one. Or in his case, a bored soul waiting for his younger brother to arrive.
Sasuke proposed that they meet at noon, and living thirty minutes away from their home town, Itachi expected to arrive there first. Ten minutes shy of the designated meeting time, he didn't mind walking around until Sasuke arrived; it was a beautiful summer day. What he didn't expect was for Sasuke to arrive twenty minutes after noon had come and gone, moments before he pulled out his phone to dial his sibling's cell.
"Sasuke." Itachi softly called out to him, pulling himself to a stand.
"Oh. There you are." Sasuke greeted him, turning around in the direction of his voice. "I was starting to think you had forgotten."
Itachi resisted the urge to roll his eyes, keeping his gaze level with Sasuke's. "I could say the same." He muttered. He looked Sasuke up and down, noting the confidence Sasuke emitted in the way that he stood, his hands deep in the pockets of a thin sweatshirt and the majority of his weight balanced on his right leg.
"Before you say anything," Sasuke said, shifting his hands around in his pocket until he produced a white envelope, "I bought her a card. I would've bought a fancy bouquet, but I have bills to pay and I need to get you a card for your birthday too." He turned his head away in embarrassment.
Itachi smiled, shifting the bouquet to his other arm as he ruffled Sasuke's hair. "It's the thought that counts. And," he said, gaining Sasuke's attention, "you don't have to get me anything for my birthday."
Sasuke shook his head and raised his eyebrows in preparation for what Itachi knew was going to be a sarcastic response. "Wow, with the dollar eighty nine I save on your card, I might have enough money leftover to eat out this week!"
"Come on," Itachi said, nodding at the path before them. "We're already late."
Fugaku and Mikoto Uchiha's headstones lay beneath the protection of a large, stately oak tree that shaded their father's headstone in the morning when the sun rose, both when the sun was in the middle of the sky, and at sunset, provided shade to their mother's.
When they reached the site, Itachi gingerly placed the bouquet in the grass before Mikoto's headstone and knelt down beside it. Sasuke did the same, leaning his card against the bouquet and after a moment of consideration, knelt beside his brother.
"Happy birthday." Itachi whispered.
"She can't hear you." Sasuke uttered.
Itachi shot him a quick glare that went unnoticed by his younger sibling and focused on the granite slab in front of him. He was past the point of acting like he did when his mother was alive, remembering the times when he would visit her grave and hide the bouquet he'd bought behind his back to surprise her when he arrived. He whole-heartedly believed that there was life after death and that his mother was watching them from above, even if Sasuke didn't think so. However, each year on her birthday, he always greeted her upon arrival and before leaving, figuring that she at least deserved to hear him wish her a happy birthday when in reality, he said it to counter the years he wasn't with her when she was alive to celebrate it.
"Happy birthday, mom." Sasuke sighed in resignation and looked away when he caught Itachi smiling at him.
Itachi closed his eyes and silently wished his mother a happy birthday and opened them again to find Sasuke's head bowed, eyes closed. To know that regardless of their difference of opinions, Sasuke still mimicked his older brother's actions brought a smile to Itachi's face.
His happiness quickly faded when he remembered that he needed to have a conversation with his younger sibling; a conversation he knew that Sasuke'd rather not have.
"Ready to go back?" Itachi asked, breaking the silence that had settled between them. Sasuke opened his eyes and nodded, pushing himself off the ground and waited for Itachi to do the same.
Waving goodbye to their mother, and nodding in the direction of their father's grave, Itachi turned to meet Sasuke on the stone path.
"How're you holding up?" Sasuke asked in light of his brother's strange habits.
"Fine." Itachi answered easily and changed the topic of conversation to a different matter, one that had been on his mind for days now. "I was thinking about looking for a roommate."
Sasuke, whose gaze was fixed on the stone path before them, drew his eyebrows together in confusion for a moment before sighing. "Let me guess; this is all part of your plan to get me to look for a roommate, isn't it? Find one yourself, tell me all about how much money you've saved and how easy it would be to do the same, right?"
"No, not at all." Itachi responded, smoothly. He made sure that he kept his tone even and chose his words carefully so that Sasuke wouldn't overreact in the same way as he had before.
"Then why do you need a roommate all of a sudden?"
Itachi sighed and averted his gaze. "Since you've been gone, I realized that I have an extra bedroom that I could rent out for someone else to live in." He said, brushing a stray leaf from his shirt, leftover from the bouquet he was holding moments earlier. "Having a roommate would slice my rent in half, which would save me more money per month, which I could then put towards other venues."
"Like what?" Sasuke asked him.
"Retirement, loans, expenses, emergencies, etc.; things you should also be thinking about."
Sasuke shot him a look. "You think that I haven't considered any of that before?" He asked.
Now he knew that he had pushed Sasuke a little too far and needed to quickly steer the course of the conversation back on track. "I'm not saying that. I'm trying to get you to see that even I, at almost thirty years old, still have financial concerns that I need to take care of. It's never as easy as it seems."
"You think you're the only one who can manage everything on their own?" Sasuke retorted. "Because you can't, and you didn't when you first moved out, because dad paid your security deposit and first month's rent."
Itachi stopped walking and put his hands up to calm Sasuke down. "Sasuke, you have to realize that I had loans to pay off and a salaried job already lined up whereas you on the other hand—"
"Me on the other hand," Sasuke continued, "I may not have been offered a salaried job like you were when you graduated from college, but unlike you, Itachi, I don't have college loans either. Mom and dad could've told you over and over that you weren't ready to live on your own because you had loans to pay off, but they didn't, did they? No. Instead, dad knew you could handle everything on your own, because you always have and have never given him reason to doubt you and he still helped you out at first." Sasuke hissed.
They were standing only a few feet away from the gate and were the focus of most people who had come to the graveyard expecting a calm and peaceful atmosphere, not a heated argument between two siblings.
"If mom and dad were still alive, they might have helped me out with this too even though I wasn't their prodigious genius. They wouldn't be breathing down my neck but they're both dead and I'm stuck with you." Sasuke seethed. "Mom even offered to help you look for different apartments; you never even talked to me about it once."
"Because I didn't know you were even looking at apartments, Sasuke!" Itachi argued.
"Did you think that I was going to live with you forever, Itachi? For all your high and mighty talk, it seems like you couldn't wait to move out when you finished college, or was that too long ago for you to remember?"
Itachi groaned and rubbed his eyes. "Sasuke, we're getting off topic here; what does a decision I made in college almost a decade ago have anything to do with my decision to look for a roommate now?"
Sasuke tightly pursed his lips together and spat "Everything. You don't want a roommate. You hate interacting with other people. You don't need a roommate either because you can easily pay for a two bedroom apartment – you've been doing it for years now without a problem. If it was ever a problem, you could have told me and I would've helped you out. But you never said anything, so why is it so important for you to have somebody help you out now, a week after I've moved out?" He asked, arms crossed in expectation.
"I already told you, to build up my savings and finish paying off my loans."
"Then downsize." Sasuke interjected. "It would save you the work of living with another person because I know you, Itachi. You'd sooner sell your car than live with a total stranger if it meant saving money. This is just a shallow attempt to get me to change my mind so that I can come crawling back to you so you won't be lonely, even if you're not saying it."
In the face of Sasuke's accusations, Itachi unclenched his hands and wondered at what point of the argument he had started to clench them. More importantly, at what point did their simple conversation turn into an argument?
He looked at Sasuke, who had long since grown to be as tall as Itachi himself, whose stance radiated confidence and whose steely expression dared Itachi to prove him wrong. There was no doubt in Itachi's mind that Sasuke would make an excellent prosecutor.
But for a future prosecutor, Sasuke was a terrible listener. He always had been. Yet, miraculously, he'd managed to graduate from law school and pass his bar exam. During those years, it hadn't been easy for either one of them, but somehow they'd managed and Itachi was on Sasuke's side every day since he was born. And even though he was still very much on Sasuke's side, why did it feel as though his sibling was prosecuting him for a crime that he hadn't even committed?
But here they were, arguing in the cemetery of all places, on their mother's birthday, about the different paths life had lead them, a drastic turn of events that had left Itachi at a loss for words.
"Thought so." Sasuke said in place what would have been Itachi's response. He shoved his hands into the pockets of his jeans and walked past Itachi towards the entrance.
"Sasuke, wait!" Itachi called out, suddenly finding his voice. But Sasuke didn't turn back and Itachi didn't chase after him.
Itachi stared at his younger brother's retreating back. The very person who, at five years old, would eagerly run down the stairs of their parent's house the second Itachi arrived home and throw his tiny arms around his waist, nuzzling his head into Itachi's stomach and rapidly listing all the things they could do now that Itachi had returned home from school.
That same person who, at twenty-four years old, had turned his back on the older sibling he'd once looked up to and adored, an adult ready to make his own decisions and experience firsthand what a cold and ruthless world it was out there.
With, or without Itachi in it.
And what about that chapter? Wow, that was tense...awkward! Hopefully the brothers will soon settle their differences...or not!
Until next time!
~Sasori33-001
PS The next chapter is another Itachi chapter!