Buried Alive – Chapter 11: You Know Me

A/N: My laptop is up the creek, but luckily for all of us I've got access to the clunkiest and crappiest computer ever as a backup, so after using my super slick (word ruined FOREVER) and smoothest laptop ever with a sexy widescreen this seems epicly lame. Still, we all get our dose of Buried Alive, so it's all good :D Glad to know everyone enjoyed/was freaked out by the lemon last chapter. Just for the record, I spent six hours sewing a bible verse as penance (another word I have ruined for myself FOREVER) into a tiny sampler for a friend as a gift. I believe it was, "This is the day that the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it", which is part of Psalm 118. I am a good little Catholic girl really (well, not good, but I am Catholic). No sex for a while now but we're back to focusing on the main pairing! Yay! Song of the chapter is 'Don't Wanna Think About You' by Simple Plan. For obvious reasons. You'll see ^^.

This is thinking/dreaming.

This is regular story.

This is author's note.

This is title.

Warnings: The lemon's over, so we're back to the obligatory swearing. Sorry guys, nothing juicy for a while. If you skipped the lemon, you didn't miss too much, but if you did I recommend skipping right to the bottom of the last chapter for the final bit of dialogue. It's relevant.

Disclaimer: *Sigh* Don't own Naruto, and I don't own any of the guys…I just make them do whatever I want…heheheh…and then post it to the internet for everyone to see. I'm not making any money off this, and the only reward I'm getting is all of your lovely feedback.

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I don't wanna think about you

Think about me

Don't wanna figure this out

I don't wanna think about you

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I was getting to be an expert at bottling. Not bottling liquids, although some alcohol might be useful at some point. Bottling emotions. Instead of feeling the intense anger, betrayal, sadness, uncertainty and shock that I should have felt, I stored it all in the 'do not go there' part of my mind. It was the same part where I kept the visions of my parents' death. It was nicely and safely locked away behind mental barriers that were starting to crack under pressure.

First, I thought I should feel angry. This Madara person had to be lying about something. Was I honestly supposed to believe he was my ancestor? I couldn't even confirm whether he was an Uchiha based on our physical traits or Sharingan, since he wore a mask. The power he held over my brother was uncanny – no one I remembered from our childhood had ever held that kind of respectful sway over him, and fewer still had elicited some kind of panic from him.

What exactly was that, when he was trying to pull Madara out of the room? Why would he want the man away from me? Was Madara really needed elsewhere, or was it a lie? If it was a lie, what price would Itachi pay?

I rolled my eyes at myself. Why did I care all of a sudden about him?

Something had snapped when I'd heard the story. Until I had a direct confirmation from Itachi himself, I wouldn't believe it. But I could think of my brother as Itachi again, not just a nameless face I associated pain and perverse longing with. It was like a weight lifted off my chest. I hadn't even thought of him as Itachi for years.

I was supposed to feel betrayed, if the story was anything to go on. It was Konoha to blame, not my brother. He was under orders, and ANBU don't disobey orders. Death is better than refusing to carry out a mission, and being directly ordered to kill every Uchiha would have been the only way to force him to obey.

Then why did he spare me if he was going to abandon me? He might as well just have killed me, rather than leave me to an empty house, stained in blood and memories. That was the one emotion I couldn't bottle up because I had been bottling it up for years, and it was overflowing.

Then there was uncertainty. If I had been lied to about the motives behind the murders for so many years, what else had Konoha been withholding? There had been many opportunities to tell me, make my life a little easier. Who decided it was a good idea to heap so much grief, so much responsibility, on a newly very fragile child? I hoped they were dead, whoever they were.

"Otouto," Itachi's voice spoke quietly from across the small room. I jumped, a little irritated at myself that I hadn't noticed his entrance. I looked up, looking into his face, looking for any signs of what might have happened in the time he was gone, but his face was blank and impassive once again.

"I still hate you," I said. I mustered every piece of hatred I had felt over the last five years and summoned it into my eyes. I felt my Sharingan flare, but I suppressed it. I wasn't about to start a fight, or at least start a physical one. Instead, I felt compelled to force emotion out of my brother, to bring back some of what I saw in that moment of frantic apology when he drew Madara from the room before. "Tell me what happened. Madara told me a story, and I want to know if it's true."

"What he told you was true,"

"I want to hear it from you,"

"No, you don't. You don't need to hear it from me. You just want an excuse to stop talking to me, to dig yourself a little deeper into your hatred," He paused, considering something I couldn't fathom. "It won't work. Hatred will get you nowhere unless you can take action." A fleeting regret passed his face, but it was quickly swept away.

"Fine. But were you ordered to do it?"

"Yes."

"Did you beg to spare my life?" I could scarcely imagine Itachi on his knees in front of the elders and the Hokage, speaking in pleading, respectful tones. It was such a wrong image on so many levels.

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Because you're my precious little brother."

"Then why did you leave me?" I didn't mean to say that. I didn't mean to say it with such emotion, either. It was like the bottle cracked, and all the pain at being abandoned for so long came rushing out in one sentence. Five years flashed before my eyes; making funeral arrangements for every single member of my clan save two, even though I had never been taught how, forcing myself to set foot in houses still stained with blood to retrieve scrolls or valuables, graduating from the academy with no one to greet me at the gates, going home alone, cooking alone, cleaning alone, living alone, being alone.

I was always alone.

I took a deep breath, waiting for his answer. He had paused, watching my inner turmoil with a kind of examining yet knowing look in his eyes, even through his activated Sharingan.

"Because I joined Akatsuki after I left. I could hardly raise you in that environment,"

"I could have gotten used to it. You would have shielded me from the worst," The pain crept back in, slipping through my shaky control.

"I had already shown you the worst,"

"And I'm still alive, still sane,"

"We're both damaged," It was undeniable; we were both damaged beyond repair. If I had stayed with Itachi, would I have broken completely? Would we have stabilised each other? No, there had to be other reasons. Other reasons why, though I was supposedly so precious, I was worth nothing in the face of escape.

"You could have fixed me," It was a lie, and I was almost certain he knew it, too. "Stuck the broken pieces back together. I wouldn't have cared how when I was eight."

"You wouldn't have learned not to depend on me if I hadn't left you. You've grown into a strong young man, you've proved you can survive on your own, and you have been doing so since you were just a child. You went from complete dependence on your Nii-san to independence overnight."

There was a pause. We just stared at each other, eyes to eyes, bloody Sharingan to jet black. He hadn't changed as much as I had hoped. Some small, childish part of me had hoped he had grown an extra set of arms and a tail. An even more childish part, but the part that seemed to dominate me, saw him exactly as he was, a thirteen year old with eyes that were too old that never smiled. But here he was, older. Taller. More mature.

I was different, too. I was also taller and more mature. I had got my Sharingan. I was a genin. But in my head, the most childish part retained a tiny body, huge eyes and hands that clung to their Nii-san at every opportunity, only to be gently pried away by patient fingers and told that proper ninja don't do that kind of thing.

Yes, we were different, but we were painfully the same. He had few words, and I had questions. The type of question and response had changed, but the foundation was still all there. I still wanted to crawl into his lap, let him run his fingers through my hair and over my sides, innocent of everything but us.

But we were hardly innocent. Or at least, I was innocent. Itachi had been exposed to death and violence for much longer, and much younger than I had. He knew what we were doing was wrong, but he didn't stop us. I had let myself enjoy it.

The silence stretched on a little, becoming more and more comfortable as we sat and analysed. There was little tension, only our words held tension. That was why the silence was so comforting. I didn't have to think, to assess, when we were quiet, but I had to. Not wanting to do something never stopped me before.

"Our relationship was never healthy, when we were younger," I broke the silence.

"I won't deny it," The touches, the kisses, the presence, the atmosphere, the words, they were there, burned into my memory, recalled only in dreams and when my mind was at its weakest. They were in another section of my mind, the 'please don't go there, please' section, because every time I thought of it I felt intensely uncomfortable.

"Then why did you…?" I couldn't say it out loud. It was taboo, not only two men together, but two boys, blood related boys at that. It wasn't a law, but it was an unspoken rule, as black and white as murder. If you did it, you were dead. Maybe not literally, but socially. And Itachi and I had come short of committing the ultimate sin.

"Because we were never normal brothers,"

"That's not a good reason. I was too young to know what you were doing,"

"But you never resisted me,"

"I was eight. I didn't know what you were doing,"

"But you haven't been able to stop thinking about it in years. Don't lie. I haven't, either." No. There was no way I would think about that, and there was no way he would think about that. Because it was wrong. Because it was the stuff of my nightmares. He was older, he should have known better, but it still happened.

"I still hate you," I echoed, at a loss for what to say. "I think I understand you better, but I still hate you,"

"You don't hate me, Otouto. You wouldn't be empathising with me, or understanding my motives, or even talking to me if you did,"

"That isn't evidence! You can't assume that!"

"Yes, I can. I know you."

"No, you don't."

It angered me to know I was so easily read. My protests felt futile, even to me. We had grown, but we were still the same.

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A/N: Exhausted! Wrote this flat out, and it is kind of a little bit not so interesting, just establishing some boundaries, before we really kick off next chapter. Shit gets real next chapter. Oh, and for the record, there will be no sex in the next chapter. I'm just reiterating this. Sasuke still isn't too keen (or won't admit it, really) on Itachi right now. Bla bla bla review!