A/N: Chapter one! Unbetaed. Cuz I got no beta. I'm a very blunt writer, so please excuse the shortness. You can also blame meh ADHD. Look in prologue for everything concerning story. Authors notes will only appear as needed. Cuz I'm lazy.

96

Chapter One

96

"Sasuke! I'm home!" Naruto waited for an answer and he got one a few seconds later in the form of a paintbrush being dropped into a cup of water. Sasuke, not being all that vocal to begin with, now usually spoke so little and to so few people he was often mistaken for being mute. Instead of a 'Welcome home!', which Naruto supposed was normal in other houses, Sasuke just made some noise to show what room he was in. He was in the living room. "And I brought home a girl," Naruto added in a teasing tone.

That earned him a muffled grunt. Sasuke must be holding something in his mouth, probably a tube of acrylic.

Naruto looked down to the small, slip of a thing behind him. "He's been wanting to meet you, Mitsu."

She looked up at him, dark eyes wide and wary. And maybe a little disbelieving. There was an air of hopelessness, futility, and the unfairness of the world that hung around her as she stood dripping on the hall rug.

"But," he said, reaching down to muss her short, sodden hair, "I think he might want to meet a little girl. Not a drowned rat. So!" a bright grin, "Let's get you dried off." He guided her, a hand lightly touching her shoulder, down a hall and to a bathroom. Naruto took a fluffy towel and a t-shirt – he kept a small stack of clothes there for when he was lazy – from a cabinet and put them on the sink. "Take a shower if you want. Toss out your wet clothes and I'll put them in the dryer for you."

"Okay." Mitsu stared at him in the way that a dog that had been kicked too many times would, expecting that nice was too good to be true and it would only be so long before she was out in the rain again.

"I'll be with Sasuke when you're done, 'kay? You'll be able to hear us. We should be making dinner by then. Well, Sasuke will. I'll be getting in the way." This earned him a small smile, which Naruto took as a victory, and left, closing the door gently behind him. He stood behind the door so that when it finally opened, just enough to squeeze out her dripping sundress, he wouldn't scare her. It was very easy to hide your presence from an academy student.

Naruto picked it up, wondering if, perhaps, she wore bright yellow for the same reasons he had worn orange.

After making a detour to the laundry room – twenty minutes permanent press, because permanent press works for everything – he went to go see what Sasuke had been up to while he was gone implementing the third step to their Master Plan.

It seemed, while he was gone, that Sasuke had moved from painting canvas to painting the ceiling. In one corner it looked like he was painting a block of the ceiling to appear like a skylight. But with Sasuke he could never make predictions too soon. Things tended to get painted over with something new if he got tired of the idea, or if something better came up.

"How did you get her to come?" he asked quietly, walking down the wall back to the floor.

"I don't know. She's a little scared of us because of what the other villagers say, you know. I think she's desperate. No child wants to raise themselves."

Sasuke snorted disdainfully.

"Yeah. Well, we'll change things. Come on, she's going to be expecting dinner. I wonder what she cooks for herself? All I made was ramen and cereal."

"I made riceballs." A pause. "And noodles. Things in boxes."

Naruto nodded and walked to the kitchen. "Yeah. It's pretty easy to make those all healthy and nutritious. No wonder you're taller than me. Cup ramen stunted my growth. But now I can make better ramen! Though cup ramen is still really good."

Sasuke shook his head, taking out some defrosted chicken from the refrigerator.

"What? It is! Making it yourself is nice but those artificial flavorings are so addictive!" He got out some vegetables and cut them for stir fry. "You've just never had a chance to get addicted! One of these weeks, nothing but cup ramen. You will be its slave forever."

A huff. "Dumbass."

"Yeah, you're right. We'll never get the elders to let us if we do something like that. They'll say we're irresponsible." Naruto made a face. "But after! In a year or something. You, me, and that cupboard." He pointed to a cupboard with a sign hanging off its knob reading "Naruto's Super Sacred Cup Ramen: Touch and DIE". It was one of Naruto's more endearing quirks.

Sasuke, now ignoring him, was calmly cooking the vegetables, pushing and flipping them around the wok to make sure they were cooked evenly.

Mitsu cautiously entered the kitchen as Naruto dumped the chicken into the wok, causing the oil to spit fiercely and making the two men jump back in surprise.

"You have too much oil in there!"

"No I don't! The chicken was too wet!"

Naruto opened his mouth to retort, and closed it. He knew very little about cooking. Oh, he'd tried. And he'd kept trying for years. He'd failed, failed again, and failed again miserably enough that Sasuke has all but banished him from the kitchen, allowing him to only cook things that came in boxes. Cans if he was in a good mood. So Sasuke was probably right.

Sasuke smirked at him, and went back to the wok. Naruto followed him with his eyes and noticed his hands were shaking and his breathing was too sharp. Things like that were normal nowadays.

Naruto turned to the door, where Mitsu was clinging to the frame. "Dinner'll be done in a couple of minutes, if Sasuke doesn't mess up."

Sasuke grumbled something obscene under his breath that made Naruto laugh. Mitsu inched away from the door towards them, the collar of Naruto's faded black t-shirt slipping down her shoulder. Naruto waved to her. "Come on. Sit at the table. I hope you like chicken." Mitsu nodded, and took her seat.

Sasuke finished pushing the food around and, after checking to make sure that the chicken was cooked, slid the food onto three plates, which both he and Naruto carried over to the table.

"I heard you talking."

Sasuke and Naruto looked at eachother and then back to her.

"Are you doing something bad? Is that why you're worried about the elders?"

Naruto shook his head. "No. We're going to be doing something very good. We just don't think they'll like it. It's going to be something that no one in Konoha's done before. It will be greater than anything anyone's ever done for our village." Naruto's eyes grew more impassioned as he spoke, his voice brighter. "A lot of people will think we're doing something wrong because it goes against tradition, but I think that we'll end a lot of grief, a lot of despair. We can change the village so much."

"You talk too much." The mood was shattered. "We're starting an orphanage."

"A what?"

"You saw how big this place is when I brought you in. The Uchiha clan grounds are huge! Each kid could have their own house if they wanted it."

"What's an orphanage?"

Naruto looked at her, mouth agape. He turned to Sasuke. "I'd forgotten about that part."

"Did you know about orphanages at her age?"

"No. Did you?"

"Of course not. We were both surprised to find out about them in Hidden Grass. Dumbass."

"Ba-!"

"Um, what's an orphanage?"

"—oh. Um, yeah." Naruto laughed sheepishly. "An orphanage is a place where kids with no family live together. In Hidden Grass there was an old couple who looked after them until they turned eighteen and were acknowledged as adults by the village."

"That sounds," she paused, "nice."

"Yeah. Konoha's never had something like that. Everyone's too tied up with their own families and too worried about keeping secrets from eachother. And it hurts our village. I know you're resentful that you're alone. You feel like they've abandoned you. I don't think they mean to make kids feel like that on purpose, but it's a crime. That kind of neglect is unforgivable."

Sasuke's face grew bitter. "Konaha only cares about making good ninja. If they can do what Konaha wants, it doesn't matter what they feel. If the kid breaks, it's his own fault. Not theirs."

Naruto gave Sasuke a soft look. "We'll stop that. We'll give them all a home. And a family, if they want it."

"You'd make a lousy parent," Sasuke teased with a broken smirk.

"I give you a week before someone flies through a wall."

"Just you."

"I'm someone."

"You think too highly of yourself."

"Bastard."

Smirk.

"So you're going to make all of us live here?"

Naruto shook his head. "Not make. I'm hoping you'll want to live here. We're not bad people. Sasuke's not a traitor, no matter what anyone else says. He's not!" He took a deep breath, in through his nose and out through his mouth. "We know what it's like to live alone, to raise yourself. We won't show pity, but we can provide understanding. And comfort. Someone who's there. That's more than we had for a long time."

"What do you get out of it?"

Sasuke and Naruto looked at eachother. "Get out of it?" Naruto asked.

"You have to be getting something out if it. No one would do something like that for free." Mitsu was giving them a cold look. "I don't want to be taken advantage of. I'd rather be alone than used. Do you think I'm weak because I'm a girl? That I need someone to help me!"

"No!" Naruto shook his head emphatically. "We've watched you. Between the Academy and odd jobs, you have no time for yourself! You're nine, right? You should be out having fun! It's not fair."

"Life's not fair."

"No it's not," Sasuke said in a soft, husky tone, "but you don't have to make things harder."

"We like you," Naruto continued. "We like what we've seen. You're serious, levelheaded, and hardworking. Maybe if the others see someone like you not minding being here, they'll give us a chance too."

"I still don't get why you're doing this."

Naruto shrugged. "It feels right." He looked down at their untouched meals. "Acceptance, maybe?"

"Forgiveness," Sasuke whispered.

Naruto nodded. "Yeah. I guess that is the reason," he agreed softly.

Mitsu pushed her food around with her chopsticks. "You have a week. And if I don't want to stay, you have to pay me what I lost not doing jobs."

Naruto beamed at her. "Deal."