For five full seconds, Sasuke contemplated turning back around. A shinobi of his caliber couldn't be bothered—most certainly not on that shinobi's first Friday night off in more than half a year. Decidedly not on this particular night, when Sasuke risked a husband walking in if he dragged his feet and showed up late to his…appointment.
The drunken man on the ground let out a choked cry, shielding his midriff from his attacker. And Sasuke's heels twisted in the dirt to leave.
You literally enforce the law for a living, teme.
Sasuke's mouth twitched.
But then, you walked away back then too, so maybe I shouldn't even be surprised…
He stilled, not even a meter from where he had started.
The words, sadly, were less of a haunting premonition and more of a very specific memory. It galled Sasuke that a disturbingly accurate imitation of that whine existed in his brain at all.
But somehow—for a man who had matured without an ounce of awareness otherwise—Naruto had an inexplicable knack for discovering when Sasuke was less than by-the-book. And as much as Sasuke detested his recent unintended celibacy, the calculus worked out differently with Naruto in the equation. (Not to mention that Sai always sided with him on these matters, and his lectures were downright…)
Annoyed but resigned, Sasuke turned his attention back to the scene he had attempted to leave. He rapped a disdainful hand against the filthy stone wall. The harsh patter against the stone echoed in the narrow alleyway.
A pair of eyes, black and dull, swiveled to him. The…creature—there was no other word for it—paused, one stubby leg poised above the drunken man's head.
Even looking directly at it, Sasuke couldn't tell its gender. For that matter, he wasn't entirely certain it was human. It looked like some sort of miniaturized gremlin, hair matted and dark with dirt.
Sasuke arched a brow.
Slowly, as though it were unused to the expression, the gremlin's lips cracked into a wide, stupid smile. They stared at each other like that, for long enough that he started to wonder if it was capable of speech.
Which was precisely when its foot dropped, stomping viciously on the man's face.
The man in question let out a strangled cry. Sasuke blinked.
The small foot rose again…with admirable speed, some part of him reflected, mildly impressed. Sasuke overcame his stupor (he would never admit it, but that was precisely what it was) and stepped forward to grab the dirty thing by the scruff of its neck.
"Are you blind or deaf?" he requested, voice flat.
Or, perhaps, he acknowledged, recalling his first impression, it didn't understand his language.
The drunken man shuffled pathetically toward the opposite wall. The gremlin's gaze snapped to it, instantly catching the motion.
Sasuke gave it a brusque shake to get its attention again.
"Bit busy right now," the gremlin had the nerve to inform him, perfectly coherently.
His jaw shifted. "I'm. Busier."
Civilians were hardly his concern. But, regrettably, the general bureaucratic consensus these days was that it was "a grievous violation of his duty" to let petty civilian crime slide in his presence, even if rogue shinobi were his official responsibility.
There was also the whole thing with Naruto always finding out.
They had a whole civilian police force devoted to this sort of thing. Why did he have to pay for their incompetence?
Sasuke, with strenuous effort, said none of this aloud.
"Nothing to see here, shinobi sir," it tried, dirt-smudged face innocuous. It eyed his uniform. "Looked like you were in a hurry anyway. Bet a fancy shinobi man like you's got plans."
His gaze fell pointedly to the man groaning deliriously on the ground.
"He's too drunk to tell," it cajoled.
"Exactly," Sasuke said coolly. "What could he possibly have done to you, when he's too drunk to even stand upright?"
Had it been the other way around, it might have been a different matter. But a pint-sized creature going to town on a grown man nearly twice its size? It was nearly entertaining. Which led him back to his original point: Sasuke wasn't exactly seeing a reason to interfere. Fucking bureaucracy.
"He fell," it said darkly, "on my house."
He followed the gremlin's grimy pointed finger to a crumpled cardboard box a few feet away.
"Sack of potatoes," it shrieked at the shuddering drunk, "lump of shit—"
Without an ounce of shame, Sasuke let his sharingan flare.
The gremlin's mouth snapped shut.
A silent stare-off commenced. After a few seconds, he saw its left eye start to twitch.
The drunk, who had been moaning and groaning on the ground seemingly down for the count, suddenly lurched to his feet. Both Sasuke and the gremlin watched, vaguely astounded, as he sprinted around the corner and disappeared from sight.
"Huh."
"Not so drunk after all," Sasuke observed, dry.
The gremlin nodded, open-mouthed, in bemused agreement.
Then current events seemed to penetrate through its shock. "Put me down," it sniffed, sullen. "I've got to find a new house now! And you took away my vin-gence."
Sasuke stared at it, disturbed. "Your what?"
"Vin-gence." It glowered, staring off in the direction the drunk had staggered. "He did something bad to me, so I do it worse back to him."
The crumpled box crept into his peripheral.
"Where are your…creators."
"Huh?"
"Parents."
"Dunno."
He stared at it, expression unchanging.
"You've demonstrated intent to pursue," Sasuke said flatly.
"….what does that mean."
"It means," he muttered, "that I can't let you go."
"What?" The creature's head jerked up, eyes round.
He maneuvered it so that it was tucked under one arm and started walking.
"Nooooo. You can't take me to jail. I'm too pretty!" it wailed.
"Stop making noise," he grunted, as a woman carrying a grocery bag gave him a sharp look. Fortunately, his uniform seemed to appease her.
"Where are you taking me?" The gremlin pinched at his side.
Only years of grueling endurance training kept him from burying its head in the dirt.
"The orphanage, where kids like you should be," he hissed. "Now shut up."
"No," it gasped. "…you can't. They'll eat me there!"
These words weren't enough to halt Sasuke—he continued, dogged in his path through to the heart of the village—but they were enough to make him forget his request that the child shut up.
"They'll pluck me apart like a chicken and dig out the soft parts and put it on a grill—"
"They won't."
"You're just stupid so you don't know," it whispered, black eyes glittering like twin beetles.
Considering that the orphanage's creation had been a joint effort between Root's rehabilitation program and the council, which included Naruto—he sincerely doubted cannibalism would be involved. He contented himself with trying to glare the creature to submission as it continued to whinge.
When he reached the orphanage, he found it to be modest but dignified and well-kept if not very large. His taxes had taken a sharp increase to build the place. Sasuke found himself somewhat underwhelmed.
The gremlin's shrieking—which now pierced his ears—seemed a rather disproportionate reaction, all in all.
His gaze lowered—and narrowed further. A placard on the closed doors neatly declared that their open hours had ended more than two hours ago.
The gremlin had graduated to curses, pieced together with obvious novice skill. He ignored it and lifted his hand to knock on the door. The sound echoed.
He waited for a minute, impatient, before he attempted again. As more fruitless attempts passed, however, and he still didn't hear any movement from inside the building heading toward the door, his irritation grew.
Didn't parents drop their kids in front of orphanages in the middle of the night in straw baskets? One would think this institution's hours would be adjusted to accommodate such activities. Of course, the gremlin was too large; it wouldn't stay quietly in a basket until morning.
"They're not going to let us in this late," the gremlin crowed, as though it had known this all along—it couldn't hide the relief in its voice fully.
Its eyes were calculating as it poked and prodded at his clothing. "Looks like you'll have to take me back. Bet you could buy me a nice, spacious house, with fancy clothes like that."
— you walked away back then too, you always walk away, Sasuke—
Sasuke scowled.
"I can't," he reflected. His gaze drifted to the sky.
"Huh? Wait. Where are you walking, then….Hey! Did you hear me? Where are you walking—"
"Sasuke, you're back," Itachi greeted, turning from the stove with a red apron tied around his waist. His gaze alighted on the gremlin, eyebrows rising slowly. "With a child."
His brother paused. "I recall the gestation period being fairly longer. Did you not use protection?"
Itachi also, for that matter, had an annoying habit of knowing exactly what Sasuke did.
"Funny," Sasuke reciprocated, unamused.
"Where are we?" the gremlin grunted, having worked itself into a foul mood in the time it had taken Sasuke to reach home. "Who's that?"
It fought against his hold. Sasuke lifted it even higher from the ground. He already had his uniform to clean; he wasn't inclined to waste time scrubbing its filth from his floors.
"You're going to eat me, aren't you," it whined. "He's already cooking—"
"What's your name?" Itachi requested. His lips slipped with into a smile Sasuke had only recently started to see again.
Sasuke averted his gaze.
The gremlin's face was severe. "What d'you need to know that for? Does it make me taste better?"
"For the last time, no one is eating you—"
"You are! I know it! They told me."
"Nonsense," Sasuke snapped.
"Perhaps," Itachi said, smile smoothed away, "this was conveyed…in an allegorical sense."
"What?" It took him a few moments to understand.
When he did, he dropped it.
Absurdly, it landed like a cat on all fours. Even more surprisingly, it didn't dart. It appeared to consider it, until it inhaled—and then it was entranced. It sniffed loudly, head craning toward the wok pan on the stove.
"Smells good." The words were dazed and slightly slurred, like saliva had flooded its mouth.
Sasuke couldn't empathize. His stomach was still rolling.
Itachi looked carefully at the small creature in their kitchen. After a moment, he crouched to its level—all the while remaining at a distance, no doubt a defense-mechanism learned from his days once assisting at the academy. "If you want. You're welcome to have some," Itachi said evenly.
The gremlin's grimy foot tapped idly against the floor—imprinting more dirt each time. It looked sorely tempted, blinking rapidly at his brother. "But what if you try to eat me?" it asked, eyes mistrustful.
Something in Sasuke snapped. He went to one of the katanas they kept stashed behind a tapestry and yanked it off. The gremlin shrieked—only to blink rapidly, as the hilt was presented in its direction.
"There," he ordered.
It blinked.
"Take it."
It regained its voice. "Why?" it argued, instantly combative.
"Sasuke," Itachi murmured.
"So that you don't have to worry," Sasuke answered, cool.
The gremlin's gaze darted between him, Itachi, and the katana, like it couldn't quite believe its luck. When the offer still wasn't retracted, it let out a delighted cry and made grabby hands for the katana.
Sasuke let go. As it turned out, the gremlin was unable to support the blade's full weight. The other end of the katana dropped instantly, creating a small but noticeable divot in the floor.
The creature didn't notice, fawning over its prize. Its grimy hands tracked stains onto the pristine blade. Sasuke winced.
"You're not stepping another foot into this house without washing that filth off," Sasuke decided. Itachi's head cocked to the side. He ignored it. "Take that katana with you—carefully—and head toward the bathroom down there. Don't step out until each and every particle of dirt is down the drain."
"Do I have to?" it complained, frowning.
"It's non-negotiable."
It pursed its lips. "Don't know—"
"It means you don't have a choice," Sasuke explained curtly.
The foot tapping increased in speed. "How do I keep the dirt off if it's on my clothes too, hm?"
"I'm sure we have some old clothes your size around somewhere," Itachi said lightly. He turned the heat off on the stove. "I'll leave some just outside the door."
The child—for it was a child, Sasuke reminded himself glumly, why else would it be in his kitchen?—gave them each a dour look, making its opinion on the matter of being clean clear. But then the pan sputtered, sending forth an extra waft of savory scent.
They all heard its stomach grumble.
Before Sasuke could examine its expression fully, the child turned swiftly and marched to the bathroom. The katana trailed behind it, dragging loudly and marring the flawless wood floor. The child was dedicated, however, to tugging the blade along like others did their favorite blanket or stuffed animal.
The bathroom door shut with a huff of effort. They heard the lock twist and click. Itachi turned to Sasuke.
Sasuke withstood the perusal, stoic.
"Not sure that was wise, otouto," Itachi said slowly.
Sasuke plucked one of the tomatoes from the counter and bit into it.
"Did you give that katana to appease the child," the older man asked casually, "or to appease you?"
They both knew the katana was little more than a toothpick against either of them, especially wielded by someone so untrained.
But Sasuke had an inexplicable sense that the gremlin had known the sham too. In that split second before it had turned, he had seen something else. Something…jarringly older and colder than its years warranted—and then it had gone to the bathroom.
In that moment, it had felt uncomfortably like looking in a mirror.
Sasuke bit into his tomato, glowering.
"Ah," Itachi remarked with polite surprise. "It's a girl."
Sasuke was more preoccupied with the water that was dripping onto their floor. All it took was one drop to beckon wood rot. And what an inconvenience would it be if—
"Of course I'm a girl," the child sniffed, still shaking wet pink strands violently away from her face like a rabid dog. "What d'you think I was?"
He found himself staring at the pink hair on its head, disturbed.
Itachi tipped his head. "I apologize for the poor phrasing—"
"A gremlin," Sasuke said. "Sit down. Eat."
His brother arched a brow, mildly disapproving.
It—she, he corrected begrudgingly—peered up at him with utmost suspicion. "What's a grem-lin?"
Sasuke didn't blink. "You."
She sniffed scathingly. Hunger seemed to win out, however. Maneuvering her new katana, the child pulled one of the chairs away from the kitchen table. She hopped once to get onto the seat and missed. Scowling, after a few seconds of heated, internal debate, she quickly let go of the blade and pushed up with her arms. As soon as she was seated, she grabbed the katana possessively again.
She leaned over the steaming bowl, wary and simultaneously transfixed.
"What's your name?" Itachi asked.
The child straightened up, puffing out her chest. "Where I come from, they call me bone-crusher."
Sasuke grimaced. "Won't gremlin suffice?" he muttered. His strange sense of discomfiture increased.
"What name did your parents give you?" his brother requested, ignoring him entirely.
The gremlin looked at Itachi blankly. "Don't know them."
Itachi's eyes slowly traveled back to him.
Sasuke's mouth pinched. "Orphanage was closed," he said. "I'm taking her tomorrow morning, before work."
"I see," Itachi said, thoughtful.
In the meantime, the girl lost the war against her stomach and began shoveling food into her mouth with impressive fervor. Sasuke sneered as a coriander leaf smacked wetly against the wall, part of the wreckage she left behind.
"Even if you won't be here long, is there a name you would like to be called in the meantime?" Itachi offered.
She chewed thoughtfully on a chunk of fish, brow furrowed. Pitch black eyes, not entirely unlike theirs, Sasuke reflected abruptly, drifted to the ceiling. "Hm… Well I do like bone-crusher…"
Sasuke stared at his brother for several seconds. Then, he stood abruptly and marched to the telephone in the kitchen.
He punched in the number from memory with violence. It picked up on the third ring.
"Hello?" a low, indifferent voice answered.
Sasuke straightened. "Kakashi. Give the phone to her."
"Alas," his hokage drawled after a pause. "You have rather unfortunate timing. Sakura just stepped out for a leisurely stroll to Suna—"
"It's an emergency."
He heard the phone change hands.
"Sasuke," Sakura hissed. The utterance was a mix of irritation, dislike, and reluctant concern. "If you need me for whatever mess you've got yourself in, why the fuck would you call the home phone—"
"I asked you this once, Sakura," Sasuke interjected, voice low, "and I accepted your answer then. If you lied then— You cannot lie to me now." He swallowed painfully, because it sickened him to stoop so low. "If these last ten years have meant anything, if the work we have put into this village with Naruto and Sai has meant anything, then—"
"Fuck, Sasuke," Sakura rasped, sounding disgusted as well. "What is it?"
Sasuke stared grimly through the arched entryway into the dining room to where the gremlin sat.
"Did you…copulate with Itachi and have his child?"
He waited. A beat later, he heard the dial tone indicating she had hung up.
That was probably a no, he decided. His shoulders relaxed.
When Sasuke rose the next morning, he didn't have to look outside the window to know he had woken up late. An extra warmth had settled on his skin, beyond the blanket or the temperature of the room: the beginnings of sun.
It was, without question, bad form to use one's sharingan for something as quotidian as a late morning. Even so, in a lifetime of decision-making, no one had ever accused Sasuke of making particularly good decisions.
He was half way out the door before he remembered the girl.
He paused, one foot outside and the other in, mouth working. Eventually, he turned stiffly back, scowling as he stalked down the hallway to the second room.
He pushed the door open with practiced silence—not out of conscientiousness but out of habit. The morning light was harsh here, unfiltered in the absence of curtains that had been removed decades ago. Even with his sharingan deactivated, he could see dust particles in the air, disrupted by his entry.
It was barely suitable for inhabitance and required a deep clean he frankly didn't have the time for. A good thing he was taking the child to the orphanage—
…which he had planned to do this morning.
Damn, Sasuke thought, annoyed.
The girl would just have to stay until evening. It would be a pain to try to make it back from the department within the orphanage's inconvenient hours, but he had managed worse. He'd finish work, come home, pick up the girl, and walk her over to the orphanage, where she would at last be in the hands of trained professionals, specializing in the care of…whatever the thing currently occupying his old bedroom was.
Sasuke's gaze drifted to her, skeptical. The creature—allegedly a girl—was sleeping on her back, katana clutched tightly at the center of her chest like she had been entombed with it. It seemed rather a parody of that noble samurai scene, however, as the blade jutted absurdly past her feet, outsizing her.
In retrospect, it had possibly been…ill-advised to give her that katana.
Before imagined reprimands could start echoing in his head, Sasuke scowled, aggrieved, and reached down to extract the blade.
Short, stubby fingers flexed with suspicious agility to halt the motion.
Sasuke's eyebrow slowly rose.
"So you're awake."
"…No," the girl tried. It ended up sounding like a question.
Sasuke rolled his eyes. "Give me the katana."
In a flash, her expression grew startlingly cold.
"No."
Ah, Sasuke thought.
So this was what he had thought he had seen the previous night. That stunning calculation—an inappropriately mature wariness—so thinly disguising something else.
He fell silent in an instant.
Desperation, he recognized. And also that fear.
The child shifted slowly into a sitting position, eyes not leaving him for even a moment. "So you are going to eat me." The accusation was voiced without anger, merely cold.
It seemed it had indeed been feigning naivete—or "eat" had become a general euphemism in its vernacular: not just for what Itachi had intimated, but the unmentionable at large.
He watched as her hands paled around the katana.
"Get stupid, when I get hungry," she bit out, eyes dark like bruises. "Not like this katana is even going to make a difference for someone like you."
Self-loathing weaved in and out between the words, nearly sibilant.
"Go on," the child snarled, expression ferocious. She scrambled to her feet on the bed, wiry arms contorted to heft the katana. "Just you try it—"
She shrieked as he grabbed her wrist with blinding speed and yanked her arm—and the blade—up.
The child's eyes bulged, caught on the metal glancing his throat.
"Just a little more pressure," Sasuke relayed, clinical, "and that would be the carotid you would be slicing."
"W-what," she stuttered.
He guided her forward. Her mouth rounded, as a trickle of blood trailed down his neck.
"But if I let go," he started. He released his hold, and her arm dropped. The katana sank into the mattress, and feathers fluttered into the air. "Your aim, or lack of, won't matter. Hence—"
He shifted forward. She reared back. But he had only reached above her to remove the blade mounted there. It was the sole decoration in his childhood bedroom.
It had once been his training katana. He had placed it there as point of petty pride, once it had graduated from regular use.
Sasuke flipped it now until the hilt faced her. He spread his other hand, waiting.
At first, she stared at his open palm. Then, slowly, eyes furtive, as though she doubted herself each inch she moved, she dragged the heavier katana toward him. A tearing sound was followed by the eruption of more feathers.
In a swift motion, he grabbed the hilt and placed the training katana in her empty hand.
She leapt back immediately, bouncing where she landed on the mattress.
The child pursed her lips, surveying him with a nearly affronted expression.
"I could have stabbed you," it insisted. "Would have in just a few more seconds—!"
Sasuke leaned the larger katana against the wall, calm.
She huffed, crossing her arms. "Would have made your boyfriend cry too."
That gave him pause. "My what?"
It seemed, from her expression, that she was steadily beginning to accept he was crazy.
"Black hair. Pony tail. Cooked the meal last night that might have killed me, though if it really had to be my last—"
"Are you blind?" Sasuke asked, serious.
Her mouth twisted, pulling her nose to the side too.
"That's my brother."
"I'm not blind!" she scoffed. "Just—"
"We look literally the same—"
"—kind of super weird to live with your brother when you're old."
Sasuke's mouth closed.
"I am not old," he hissed at last.
"You're ancient," the child said gravely.
He sneered. "And our living situation isn't changing. When I get back this evening, the first thing I'm doing is taking you to the orphanage."
Her mouth opened immediately, eyes flaring.
"Where they are not going to eat you," Sasuke yelled. "For fuck's sake, I'll even let you take the katana. There!"
He watched as she processed that. Finally, she settled, seemingly appeased.
"Language, otouto," a calm voice penetrated through the floor boards from below.
Sasuke gritted his teeth.
She stabbed a finger at him. "Super weird," she informed him.
He spun on his heel and slammed the door behind him.
At two o'clock in the afternoon, he got pulled into an emergency mission involving a conspiracy of rogue-nin from Konoha and Kiri who threatened imminently the ever-tenuous peace between all five great nations.
He ended up reaching home at twenty past ten. He found Itachi and the girl in the kitchen, heads bowed over their hands, eyes narrow with intense concentration.
"What," he said, blood dripping from his hair, "are you doing?"
Itachi's eyes flicked up from the dango he was shaping. "Clean up, Sasuke," he said. "You're making a mess."
"Yeah, clean up, Sasuke," the girl parroted. "You're making a mess."
Sasuke stared.
"Tomorrow morning," he said faintly. He staggered, exhausted, toward the bathroom.
The next morning, there was a freak blizzard. Sasuke woke up and found snow piling up as high as the windows. He stared, incredulous.
"You're kidding me."
"Might as well give her a haircut," Itachi instructed, handing him over a pair of scissors.
As pink hair fell to the ground of the bathroom linoleum, Sasuke wondered if he had somehow entered hell, unknowing that he had even died.
"Fuck!" the girl cried, when she saw her reflection. "Is that what I look like?!"
"Language," Itachi called out.
"When the snow melts," Sasuke muttered.
"We should really enroll her in a school," Itachi chided some months later.
"What?" Sasuke's head jerked up. He straightened, hand with the paint brush falling to his side from the wall. "Why do we need to do that? I'm taking her to the orphanage first thing tomorrow. I've pushed all my meetings."
"Right," Itachi said after a brief pause. He eyed the wall Sasuke had just finished.
"You missed the corner. Paint over there again," a high-pitched voice commanded. She wore too-short overalls, which just two weeks ago had fit perfectly. Whatever Itachi was feeding her, he reflected irritatedly, was causing freakish growth. Surely, this didn't happen to all…gremlins?
Sasuke scoffed, eyes darting to where she had pointed. "I did not."
"Did too. I'm the one who sleeps here, so I know!"
He glowered at her and immediately activated his sharingan. His eyes snapped again to the aforementioned corner. "I didn't miss any—"
"HA! MADE YOU LOOK!"
Beside him, Itachi shut his eyes with a sigh. Even so, his lips quirked ever so slightly.
Sasuke bared his teeth. "I am going to turn you over in less than twenty four hours. And I'm going to make them pay me for my service—"
"She'll need a name," Itachi said. "For school enrollment."
"Gremlin," Sasuke hissed.
"Bone crusher!" the girl crowed.
She frowned when Itachi shook his head in disapproval.
"Then…" she said, brow furrowing, "Ok, so I heard about this awesome lady in class today. She punches down whole forests and cuts off penises—"
Sasuke wheezed like he had been stabbed. Itachi patted his back sympathetically.
In the end, they narrowly escaped calling her Sakura (mostly due to Sasuke's insistence that he would rather gouge his own eyes out) and settled on Akira, after a samurai the gremlin had learned about the previous Tuesday.
When the trees were just starting to blossom, Sasuke finally managed to leave the department before ten o'clock one evening. As he strolled back, he wore an almost-smile on his face. His imagination even took vivid liberties. He visualized what the house would look like once he had packed all the gremlin's things and tidied up all her messes, pristine and restored to its original state. He felt an immense satisfaction well up within him at just the prospect of it.
Unfortunately, when he walked through the door, he found Akira scowling on the couch with a bloodied nose and a chunk of hair missing from her head.
Sasuke went from triumphant to murderous in less than a second.
"Who?"
Akira huffed, face red and scrunched up like the gremlin Sasuke still mostly called her in his head (and sometimes aloud). "I tripped."
"Don't lie to me," Sasuke said, icy. "I'm not Itachi. I'm not going to pretend not to notice."
"Yeah," Akira agreed, sullen. "You're annoying."
"You're more annoying," Sasuke hissed. "Talk."
She let out a loud, aggrieved sigh—it sounded vaguely familiar. It took him a second to realize it was his own sigh, echoed back to him.
"Just two morons with big mouths," Akira sniffed. Blood sprayed onto the couch. Sasuke shifted forward and pinched it.
"Ow!"
"Tip your head forward."
Akira blinked. "I thought it was back—"
"Forward," Sasuke grunted.
She shifted with uncharacteristic obedience, shoulders hunched.
"Where?" he pressed. "Were they bigger than you?"
"A little," Akira admitted grudgingly. "It was at school."
Sasuke relaxed slightly, hearing this. If adults had been involved—well, his subsequent actions would have broached rogue-nin status at the worst and tedious paper work at the best.
(It didn't occur to him, in this moment, to examine the disproportionate nature of his response. Frankly, he didn't care for such self-reflection)
"And?" he prompted, impatient. "How did you end up making your face even uglier?"
"I'm not ugly!" Akira shrieked. She stroked her hair demonstratively. "I have pink hair just like—"
"Akira," Sasuke snarled.
"They had big mouths," the girl exclaimed. She started to look shifty, wiggling in her seat. "They just said some things. I dealt with it. That's all."
"That explained," he said, scathing, "precisely nothing."
"I'm suspended, by the way."
Sasuke made a sharp, warning noise.
"Ugh," Akira groaned, abandoning her attempts at evasion. "It wasn't a big deal. So they talked some. Just. About you and Itachi living together and me being with you and stuff," she said in a rush, "so I gave them a real hard whack, and then they tried to whack me back, but I got them worse—"
"I see," Sasuke said.
She darted a look at him from beneath her lashes. "You see?"
"Yes." He blinked rapidly. "I see."
"I see," Akira repeated, slow.
"Quite."
They stood in silence, examining the situation they found themselves in.
"I think the bleeding has stopped," she noted.
It had. And just as she smiled, he saw that two of her front teeth had been knocked out.
"I can't take you to an orphanage looking like this," he said stiffly. There was a weird rushing noise his ears, distorting the words. "What a waste of a free afternoon."
Her head cocked to the side, an oddly constipated look on her face, which now Sasuke had come to understand was her thinking expression.
"You could teach me how to throw a kunai instead."
Still in the middle of a daze, pure muscle reflex took over. Sasuke pinched her nose a fraction harder.
"Aaaah! Okay! Some other time!"
"She's asleep," Itachi said softly, stepping out of the bedroom later that night.
Sasuke's eyes snapped open. Silently, he shifted forward from the wall he had been leaning against, coming to meet his brother in the middle of the corridor.
"And?"
"You really should learn to do some basic scans," Itachi said calmly. "Have you been relying on medic-nins all this time?"
"I've never needed—" Sasuke cut himself off. He continued, detached, "The need has never risen before. What did you find?"
Itachi's gaze flicked away, expression revealing nothing. "Apparently, there may have been a rock that was used once or twice by both parties. She had a small concussion."
"I see," he said, cold. "She didn't say."
"Of course she didn't," Itachi said, a thread of new emotion now entering his voice. Amusement, inexplicably.
Sasuke didn't return the humor, eyes dark.
Similar eyes—brother eyes—surveyed him in turn, their contents too much for Sasuke to comfortably receive.
"Do you remember yourself at that age?" Itachi asked, apropos of nothing.
Sasuke wrenched his gaze away. "I want her gone." His mouth spasmed around the words.
"You would come home with burns and scrapes nearly every day," the other man continued as though he hadn't heard. "You'd look at me with tears in your eyes, trying so…ferociously not to cry. There was no other word for it. Ferocious, and yet—so fragile. If my smile dropped for a second, they would fall in an instant; that was all the push you needed—"
"Stop," Sasuke bit out. The word echoed down the corridor, nearly loud enough to wake the sleeping occupant of the bedroom they stood outside of.
"You used to look to me to know that all was right in the world," his brother said, tender.
Something in Sasuke's chest twisted viciously. His breath rattled in his chest. A hand rose quite without his volition, searching for injury.
"The burden of it. It sits there—precisely there," Itachi's gaze fell to where Sasuke's fingers probed his own ribcage, clawed like he was searching for something deeper inside, "and it never leaves, curiously enough. Even when they stop looking."
"I don't want it," Sasuke said.
"Oh, foolish otouto. If you already know what I speak of, then it's far too late for that."
"I've packed your things."
The girl slowly lowered head to the sink to spit out foaming toothpaste.
"My teeth didn't grow back in overnight," she said after a pause.
"Doesn't matter," Sasuke said, curt. "At your age, they fall out all the time."
She stared at him, straightening. She didn't blink for a long time.
"Okay," she said, expressionless.
"Good," Sasuke said. "You may finish brushing your teeth first."
But she dropped the toothbrush without an ounce of care, so that it made a loud noise when it hit the bottom of the holder, and swallowed the rest.
As he watched, the looseness in her limbs seemed to disappear, incrementally but steadily. And then all that remained was the feral, wary creature he hadn't seen in months.
"What was it, then," she said, eyes flashing to him, dark and overly large. Near-demonic.
Sasuke's tone didn't waver. "You'll have to be more specific."
"At what point did it become too much." She busied herself with wiping down the sink—or pretended to, because she more or less splashed water onto the walls with the force she used. "Research… for the next ones. Was it painting the bedroom pink?"
Her breathing raced, shoulders heaving up and down.
"Or the kunai lessons. Or—"
She stilled. And the only noise in the small bathroom was the staccato of the water droplets hitting porcelain. A leaky faucet, he catalogued in the back of his mind.
"Where's Itachi?" she asked suddenly. Her head jerked around, like with enough effort she might be able to see through the walls.
"He's on a mission," he answered.
Her mouth opened and closed. Slowly, her eyes drifted back to him.
"Smart," she said.
Sasuke felt nothing.
"You're already dressed," he observed. "Come down, then. I'll make breakfast—"
"Not hungry," she said.
He looked at her, expression even. "Then let's go."
She carried a small backpack and Sasuke held the rest of her belongings, neatly folded and minimized into a satchel by a handy jutsu.
"I think I'm dying," the girl said abruptly, as they crossed the road.
An overly-friendly storekeeper greeted them from his stall, offering complimentary dango. They both ignored him.
"Every second, every step now, it feels a little—"
"That's just living," Sasuke said, indifferent. "An incessant approach toward death."
She went silent, face absent of its usual color. Uncharacteristically, she didn't ask him to translate his words into simpler terms. She didn't seem inclined to speak again.
When they arrived at the orphanage, the front doors were wide open and showcased a foyer and reception area. Sasuke led her to the front desk, where a middle-aged woman sat.
"And who do we have here?" she greeted warmly.
The girl's shoulders rose, chin dropping sharply. "I don't like her," she whispered at him, fingers brushing the edges of his shirt sleeve.
Sasuke's gaze slid to the woman, cool. "I found her in an alley way. No parents."
"Oh, you poor dear," the old woman tutted.
Dark eyes, from beneath pink eyebrows, became narrow slits.
"When did you pick her up?"
"November."
The woman's eyes rounded. "It's almost April now."
"I have an exceptionally busy schedule."
Maternal concern lined her face as she gently turned toward the girl. "Your name, dear?"
It became clear, after a few seconds and a vicious clack of teeth, that the recipient of this question had no intention of answering.
The matron's mouth started to curve downward. Sasuke's expression didn't change.
"Her name?" the matron whispered gently to him, as though the girl would be unable to hear.
An enraged huff of air reached his ears. Sasuke stared straight ahead, stoic.
"She doesn't recall her birth name," he relayed. "But her chosen name is A—"
Something, somehow, got stuck in his throat. He blinked.
"Sorry?" the woman prompted, brow furrowed. "I didn't quite catch that."
Sasuke frowned. He smoothly raised an arm to clear his throat.
He felt like he had swallowed gravel. "Ak-i…"
He made the fatal mistake of looking down, as he inexplicably struggled.
Dark, unholy eyes blazed up at him as expected out of a pale, pointy face, framed by absurd tufts of pink hair. Unusually reflective. Overfull. On the verge, he thought, of spilling. An absurd visage, to match a name of such history.
All that was needed, precisely as Itachi had described, was just one small push.
And just as he thought it, just with that, like a spark had struck a match, Sasuke felt his detachment forcibly, unfairly wrested from him.
A roaring noise filled his ears. His heart stuttered in his chest and then took off at a gallop. And he staggered back.
Unholy, he thought. He shouldn't have looked—
"Sir," he was vaguely aware of someone saying, "sir, are you alright? Do you need medical attention—"
"I'm dying," Sasuke rasped, and he believed it.
He reached blindly forward and then shunshined.
When he opened his eyes, he was kilometers away from the orphanage, at the top of Hokage mountain. Sasuke stared down at the village and inhaled desperate, greedy breaths of air.
He looked down and was vaguely stunned to find the girl in his arms. Fuck.
It sounded like he was more or less strangling her against his chest.
"Quiet," Sasuke hissed as she screeched.
But the creature was genetically incapable of silence. She shoved against him until she had created enough distance to be able to look at his face.
"What are we doing here?" she demanded, voice shrill. "I don't like that old hag! I don't like that place—"
"You're not going there."
She stared at him, face red, mouth trembling.
"I'm not leaving you there," Sasuke said sourly, defeated and aware of it.
"You mean—" Akira shook, face mutating through various expressions. "You mean…"
Concerningly sticky fingers knotted into his shirt.
Sasuke couldn't quite manage the dignity to voice the word 'yes.'
But his lack of denial sufficed. Akira froze utterly. Stopped blinking. Didn't even breathe.
Sasuke waited. When it emerged, he was unsurprised.
Fingers turned into claws, raking against him with the intent to draw blood.
"I hate you, I hate you, I hate you—" she roared, eyes terrible.
"I know," Sasuke said.
When they reached home, he found his brother waiting for them. The instant Sasuke relinquished his hold, Akira flew into his arms.
It pleased Sasuke, though he had long learned that his brother was considerably far from perfect, to see him struggle nonetheless. For he saw in that moment as Itachi held her, for the first time—or perhaps, it was only the first time he was capable of recognizing it—the same terror Sasuke had felt before, now on Itachi's face.
His eyes flew upward, burning. "Sasuke."
Sasuke smiled, humorless.
Itachi surveyed him closely. The look of fear didn't leave his gaze—but it was directed toward Sasuke now, suffocating and too much. His mouth flexed.
"I told you," his brother said softly, smoothing down an errant strand of pink hair, "that it was too late."
Indeed, Sasuke thought. When he had handed her his training katana, he had as good as mastered his own demise, hadn't he? And what was death other than this, this ache exactly where Itachi had pointed the previous night, where he had been utterly, unequivocally skewered?
"That girl will be the death of me," Sasuke said, grim.
"Oh, foolish otouto," Itachi murmured. "Do you see now, the futility of it all?"