The message had come at breakfast time, a scroll delivered by a silent ANBU that told Itachi that his apprenticeship wouldn't start until next week. Itachi had been a bit confused, Shisui had been ecstatic, and Asami had looked rather amused as her son dragged Itachi out of the house.
"Where are we going?" Itachi had asked, puzzled, as Shisui's grip on his forearm pulled him into the sunlit backyard. Shisui's only response was to point towards the line of birch and oak trees in the distance, grinning like a madman.
"The creek!" he'd yelled, yanking his shirt over his head and onto the grass, and Itachi had groaned.
"Absolutely not," Itachi had said, snatching his hand out of Shisui's. He'd started walking back towards the house when Shisui had tackled him, slamming him face down into the turf. A couple seconds of frantic squirming put Itachi flat on his back, glaring at Shisui as the other boy straddled him, a cocky smirk on his face.
"What was that for?" Itachi had growled, trying unsuccessfully to buck his way free. Shisui had just leaned back, giving Itachi more room to move as his eyes glinted with savage glee, issuing a playful challenge.
So here they are, twenty minutes later, grappling in the empty field behind the house, all thoughts of swimming in the creek forgotten. Itachi spits out a couple wayward blades of grass and wipes the sweat off his forehead, and Shisui looks down at the streaks of mud caked over his bare chest and lets out a chuckle.
"Call it a draw?" he says, sticking out his hand. Itachi stares at it suspiciously, and Shisui rolls his eyes.
"It's not a trap," he says, holding up his hands, and now it's Itachi's turn to roll his eyes. He's an ANBU, or at least he was. He's wise to all of Shisui's tricks, and when the other boy body-flickers to him, Itachi's already darting backwards. Barely dodging a grasping hand, Itachi drops into a dive, his shirt sliding against the grass until his fingers find what he's looking for.
The nozzle of the hose.
Shisui's eyes widen comically as Itachi aims the hose and lets loose with the highest setting on the plastic nozzle. The jet of water hisses and splatters, drowning out Shisui's gurgling cry of surprise as he tries to block the incoming deluge with his hands.
And there's something about the ridiculous way Shisui hops away over the grass, something about the way his soaked hair curls and sticks to his forehead and hangs over his eyes, something about the way he shouts—
"Mercy! Mercy!"
Itachi can't help laughing, barely hanging on to the hose as he snickers at Shisui's howl of mock-outrage. He's aiming the water to blast off the dried mud covering Shisui's stomach and chest when the sound of the screen door banging open echoes through the yard.
"Boys?" Asami calls out, leaning out the back door. "I'm leaving for work now, I'll be back later."
Itachi freezes, mortified, and feels his cheeks grow warm. He'd forgotten that Asami was home—
"There's leftovers in the fridge if you're hungry," Asami says casually, seemingly unbothered by the strange scene unfolding before her.
"Mom!" Shisui whines, using both hands to deflect the stream of water. "Aren't you going to save me?"
"Itachi, I think you missed a spot. Make sure he doesn't track any mud inside," Asami says, letting the screen door slam shut as she disappears inside the house.
Now Itachi's guffawing, gasping for breath as he chortles on the ground. Somewhere along the way, Shisui manages to lunge forward and wrest the hose from his grasp, spraying Itachi head-to-toe with icy water and soaking him all the way through. Shisui looks down, slicking his sopping-wet hair back and flashing a self-satisfied smile.
"Guess we didn't need the creek after all, huh?" he says, turning off the hose and throwing it aside. Itachi tries to catch his breath, propping himself up on his elbows and shaking his head. It occurs to him that this is the longest he's gone without thinking about his father, or his family, or anything else—
"So what do you wanna do now?" Shisui says, flopping down next to him. Itachi stares out over the meadow, watching the crisp morning sun peer out from behind downy, rounded clouds. There's a flicker of red and black as a butterfly flits over the flower-studded field, its path jerky and erratic as the gentle breeze tugs at its wings.
"I'm glad you're here, Shisui," Itachi says, following the progress of the butterfly. Grass rustles near his ear, and he knows Shisui's laying on his side and studying him.
"You're thinking again," Shisui grumbles. "Stop that."
"One of us has to," Itachi replies drily, and Shisui laughs.
"The whole point of this was to stop you from thinking," he says, reaching out and grabbing Itachi's upper arm, squeezing it reassuringly.
"You're gonna be okay," Shisui says quietly, and Itachi thinks about that for a moment before nodding. He's told himself that before, of course. Not because he believed it himself, but because Shisui told him things would work out, and Itachi trusts him.
And now, in the vibrant light of that morning sun, by the side of the one person he's always been able to trust, something finally feels different. Itachi feels a sense of acceptance settle over himself. The road's hard, the water's rough, and it hurts like hell-but he's going to be fine.
"I'm not okay now," Itachi says with a tired smile, glancing at the other boy. "But I will be."
"Thank you for the full report of the evaluation, Inoichi," Hiruzen says, setting the manila folder aside. "You're sure there's no lasting influence on the members of Team Ro?"
"None that we could find. Except for the missing memories, there's nothing wrong with them," Inoichi Yamanaka replies. There's a hint of hesitation, a note of reluctance in his voice, and Hiruzen directs a meaningful look towards where Jiraiya is leaning against the office's wall.
"Is there something else?" Hiruzen prompts.
"I, uh..." Inoichi says, looking very uncertain. He shifts from one leg to the other, and his gaze falls to the floor. "I don't want to overstep, Lord Hokage-"
"It's alright. If there's something you want to say, go ahead," Hiruzen says, curious.
"The Konoha Police Force members who possess awakened Sharingan have a special method of compiling evidence, to my understanding," Inoichi says, hands clasped in front of him. "They can preserve memories with their Sharingan in a manner that cannot be tampered with, not even by a powerful genjutsu."
"This is true," Hiruzen says thoughtfully. "You think that there may be some salvageable information locked away in the Sharingan of the ANBU involved?"
"I don't know," Inoichi says, shaking his head. "It was a genjutsu that erased the ANBU's recollection of the encounter. It's possible that some information may have survived this way, but our evaluation didn't consider that avenue of inquiry. We had neither permission, nor the expertise needed to examine their Sharingan in detail."
"One of the Police Force's higher-ups could probably access any memories that the evaluation missed," Jiraiya says from behind Inoichi.
"It's certainly worth a try. I'll send a message to Fugaku requesting his assistance today," Hiruzen says, already reaching for a pen. "Thank you, Inoichi. You might have given us a new lead."
"Thank you, Lord Hokage."
This fucking sucks.
Kakashi just knows there's something amiss with the black-haired stranger. His instincts are never off; there's more to the mystery man than meets the eye.
But hours of watching Naruto and the stranger visit the park had yielded nothing, and Kakashi could hear the unspoken "I-told-you-so" in Tenzo's slightly-skeptical glances. But Kakashi still had one lead, one thing he still wanted to investigate.
Late last night, he'd followed the stranger to an old inn near the southern edge of Konoha. The man had disappeared inside, and Kakashi felt his strangely-hazy chakra signature dim as he slept.
"You want to break into someone's room?" Tenzo had whispered furiously after Kakashi's explanation.
"Just to look around-"
"That's breaking and entering, Kakashi, it's illegal-"
So Tenzo had stayed behind, opting to find a comfortable perch in an old oak tree from where he could keep watch on the stranger, and Kakashi had made his way to the address he'd scrawled down hastily the previous night.
Now he's standing in front of the homey-looking inn. It's crowded; Kakashi can see the shifting silhouettes of patrons in the windows lining the building's face. When he pushes the door open and slips inside, a wave of drunken conversation and warm air sweeps over him.
He's standing in a low-ceilinged foyer, and there's a set of double doors flung open to his right that lead to the bar. To his left, a narrow little staircase rises steeply; presumably, this leads to the rooms.
Kakashi walks forward slowly, until he's standing in front of the main desk. The brown-haired woman looks up from her book, offering him a professional smile as she stands up.
"Welcome to the Sunset Inn!" she says brightly. "Can I help you?"
"I'm looking for someone," Kakashi says. He points to the forehead-protector tied around his upper arm, a symbol of his authority. "Are you familiar with the people staying here?"
"Yes," the woman says, her eyes wide. "I-uh, I'm at the front desk five days a week."
Kakashi nods, reminding himself to relax slightly. The clerk is growing paler by the second, and he doesn't want to intimidate or scare her. Or make her faint. It's happened before.
"Has a black-haired man with an eyepatch come inside? Has he been staying here?" he asks. The clerk frowns for a moment, thinking, before shaking her head.
"No," she says. "No one with an eyepatch, or anything like that."
Kakashi pauses, puzzled. He can clearly remember the man coming into this very room last night, so her response doesn't make sense—
"Juugo," he says, remembering what Naruto called the man. "Has anyone with that name stayed here the past couple of days?"
"That doesn't sound familiar," the clerk replies, looking down at the ledger behind the desk. She flips through a page or two, then looks up. "No, there's no one with that name that I can remember, and there's no Juugo in the ledger either."
"Can I see?" Kakashi asks politely, reaching out for the heavy book. He rifles through the pages up to a week back, but none of the names jump out at him. Kakashi closes the book, his gaze flicking up to examine the anxious clerk.
"I'm sorry," he says softly, pushing his hair back and opening his left eye. "But that's not possible..."
She stiffens as his Sharingan-empowered gaze delves into her mind, flickering through her memories as if they were just pages in the ledger on the desk. He's gentle, or at least as gentle as he can be-civilian minds rarely can handle this strain-as he combs through her recollections.
And then he sees it.
It's subtle to the point of artistry, a delicate sliver of exquisitely-formed chakra deep in the clerk's subconscious. It's a genjutsu, that much Kakashi can tell, but he's never seen one like this. He can almost see the elegant filigree, hidden in a corner of her mind, and he realizes it's clouding the clerk's perception and memory simultaneously.
Someone's put a genjutsu on her that prevents her from noticing or remembering certain things, and he has a pretty good idea who's responsible for it. Kakashi knew it, he fucking knew it from the very start. Once they report this infiltration to the Hokage, he's going to demand to be assigned to guard Naruto for the rest of the boy's life—
Tenzo's alarm fills his mind suddenly, startling Kakashi. Tenzo's chakra signature is nearby, just down the street—
Why? Tenzo's supposed to be tailing the stranger down at the park. But he's here, which means—
With a muttered curse, Kakashi scrambles through the double-doors and into the bar. A half-dozen tables fill the far side of the room, and Kakashi collapses into a free chair next to one of them, ignoring the intoxicated stupefaction of men around him.
Out of the corner of his eye, Kakashi catches a flicker of movement as the stranger's black cloak comes into view. The figure pauses in the lobby, and Kakashi grits his teeth as he realizes the poor clerk is probably either shell-shocked or unconscious from the ordeal he'd put her through.
After a long moment, however, the stranger turns and disappears up the staircase. Kakashi waits ten long, stomach-turning minutes before he gets up and leaves the inn. It's only been an hour since he was last outside, but grey clouds cover the sun and a cool breeze whips down the street as he makes his way down the street with forced casualness.
When he turns the corner, Tenzo's arm grabs him by the shoulder and pulls him forward, until they turn into a narrow alley two blocks from the inn.
"Fuck," Kakashi says, letting out a tense breath. "I think he might have made me."
"Did you find anything?" Tenzo asks, frowning with concern at the grim set of the other man's features.
"I think we need to go to the Hokage," Kakashi says slowly, looking up at Tenzo.
It had been a small village. A hamlet, really, a couple dozen houses scattered around a couple communal buildings, set back from the main road. Nestled amidst tall trees waving in the wind, bordering a small lake-it's mundane yet idyllic, indistinguishable from a thousand similar settlements throughout Fire Country.
The people here have spent their whole lives in the same ten-mile radius, with few exceptions. It's the kind of community where roots grow deep, where children grow up and fall and love and have kids of their own, running along the same paths their parents and grandparents had run.
Swaddled by golden fields and faded green-leafed groves, life here is sleepy and lazy, lusty and real, vibrant and tangible.
Now the doors on the houses hang open, brown-red splatters and stains soil the ground and streak the walls, and dark forms lay where they fell. Mothers reach for children, lovers cradle each other, and men stare with vacant eyes and expressions of terror.
And sitting in the center of this carnage, amidst the ruin of lives ended and dreams cut short, is a pale man with long black hair, his head tilted and jaw lax as a long tongue slides out and tastes the air.
Orochimaru tastes anguish and grief and fear, and it tastes good.
Perhaps lesser men, weaker men, would quail before this tableau of depravity. Perhaps they'd see the faces twisted with unadulterated horror and feel sick, or avert their eyes from the tangled viscera leaking from bodies.
But there's power in emotion, and Orochimaru revels in it. The dying traces of pain and death taint the air with their delicious coppery-salty taste, and their fear flows into his body, revitalizing his weary limbs.
Because fear is not something to shy away from, no, it's something to consume, something that makes him stronger. He feeds on it, feasts on the residual suffering, fuel to the fire. Stolen power crackles through his veins, and a predatory leer twists his colorless, thin lips.
In the days of the Third War, they knew him as dread incarnate. His inhuman, sulfurous eyes, had paralyzed legions. His legendary sword, Kusanagi, had carved a bloody path through the Five Elemental Nations. He's the monster in the dark, the name whispered in hushed tones, the architect of fear. And he's only a couple hours away from his destination.
It won't be long now.