/*Sequel to Trust.
Written as requested for Angel897
I don't own Naruto. Warning: there may be some Ooc-ness, it is alternate universe.
Sorry for lack of updates life, laziness don't mix well together. I hope you enjoy.
May God bless and keep you all,
Mustsleep Z.z
*/
The world felt too cold to him. The chill was unforgiving and the pain from breathing could have sent him over the edge.
Everyone had left, but him. He didn't know how long he waited to be alone, but that is what he wanted. Taking off would have gotten it faster, yet… he hadn't been able to leave. If he was going to be alone, he wanted to be alone in this place.
Every lesson of pose and etiquette stood between him and the freshly marked grave stone. His body felt like crumbling, his heart like falling out of his chest. It hurt. Far too much. His back remained perfectly straight though, his posture smooth.
He wanted to touch the stone with his lips, to scream and grip the grass. But he was raised an Uchiha, and that just wasn't done. He was stuck, in a place he didn't want to be.
Already regret was filling him. His actions had been like that of a child. He was trained to face everything, from enemies to politics. Nothing was supposed to scare him, or put him on edge… Why then, had he been unable to look into the casket? Why had he been so weak?
He had lost his last chance to see her, to say his last goodbyes. Now there was dirt separating them ; he would never again see her face, sit beside her bed, kneel at her side and talk to his heart's content, which hadn't been long but long enough for him to get whatever bothered him, or whatever questions he needed answering, asked. She had been his ear. She had listened to everything he said with full focus; she had never brushed him aside nor forced him to be something he was not. She had been gentle handed and allowed him to come conclusions by reinforcing his questions, and by doing that, he learned far more from her than anybody else.
He closed his eyes. Thinking about her made his heartache. How could he be uninjured, but be in so much pain?
'Mind over matter,' he had been told since he was a child. But when thoughts caused pain, what was he to do?
She would have known. She knew all the answers. She would have given her toothless smile, kissed his forehead and told him to stop thinking.
So he stopped. And his heart felt like it was shattering inside of his chest.
His eyes scanned the almost empty field. There was a civilian family, in the civilian area down the hill, standing over a lot and putting flowers down. His eyes returned to the grave before him. Flowers littered the stone and the surrounding area. None of them belonged to him though. None.
Just another mistake on his part. Just another regret. He had been selfish, so selfish with her.
His mother had told him many times that she was the oldest woman in Kohona and that she was too old to be bothered with so many questions. When he had asked her if it was true, she had called in his mother.
She had lifted one of her wrinkled fingers and demanded, "If you are to call me old, you are to say it too my face. I am not old!" She had then turned to Itachi to wink, "I'm just beautiful with years. You are to come to me if you have any questions, what's the use with experience if it cannot be shared."
He smiled his smile, just a small lift at the corners, but if he'd known what the smile brought, he would have never done it. The quiet sob escaped from his mouth before he realized what was truly coming up his throat. He put his hand to his mouth as if to suppress all emotions; it did little good.
His knees fell to the ground and he felt like a child again, sitting on the floor at the edge of Grammie's bed in the middle of the night, as he hoped she'd wake up and find him. He'd recently unlocked the sharingan; he had awoken from a nightmare about the fox. She had known he was there all along, as soon as he had opened the door. But she waited, until finally she reached out and touched the top of his head, "Being quiet will do you no good. Only if you speak will you be heard."
And he had spoken, bloody tears running down his face. She had picked him up, rocked him in her arms. She was the only one who still treated him like a child; to everyone else he had become a shinobi, a prodigy, an heir to a powerful clan. As much as it should have made him want her to see him grown up, he preferred it not so. He wanted to be a child, at least sometimes. He was so selfish.
The tears trickled silently down his face. He made no sound after his sob. He was raised better. His fingers dug into the grass before he let go. He looked up at the grave stone.
"Already, I'm lost," he spoke, hoping-wanting to speak with her, just one more time. To tell her how much he loved her. His chance was up though. It had been up three days ago.
"You're not lost silly, we're in the graveyard," a voice announced behind him.
His eyes quickly turned to red orbs to face whoever had seen him at his weakest. The red faded to coal as he looked at the little girl who had decided to kneel beside him on the grass. Her hands twirled a pink carnation, which matched her hair.
She stared at the grave for a bit then turned her head to look at him. Her green eyes looked directly at him before she began speaking, "That's a lot of flowers."
The sting hit him, "She knew a lot of people," and all but one had chosen not to recognize her death.
The little girl nodded her head, "It's very pretty."
The word caught him off guard, and he looked away from the girl and at the site. "Death isn't pretty." Yet, they tried so hard to make it seem more beautiful. As if to take away the pain, grief, and loss it brought.
"Hmm…" the little girl's lip pouted out as she tried to understand the boy beside her. Suddenly she smiled, "It's just not pretty enough yet."
Itachi turned to the little girl. "T-," his words of retort stopped as she extended the pink carnation to him.
In any other moment, in any other day he would have rebuked the girl for her misinterpretation of death. He didn't though, he stared at the little girl, his mind blank. Subconsciously though, he reacted. His hand reached out and it gently picked the carnation from the girl's hand by taking the stem.
"Thank you," he told her. He reached out and traced the letters etched in the stone before he placed the carnation at the bottom.
He looked back at the little girl.
"It looks perfect now. The white ascent the pink."
Itachi smiled, the white flowers surrounding the ground and lot did accent the one pink flower. "Yes, the white accents the pink very well."
The girl's cheeks blushed and she repeated the word 'accent' under her breath as if to memorize its pronunciation.
"Do you have a name little one?"
The little girl's eyes squinted as she smiled, "I'm Sakura Haruno."
"Sakura was my grandmother's name as well. It's a very beautiful name," Itachi said, his eyes now focusing on the similar eye color the girl had.
"Was she pretty?" the girl asked blushing.
"In her way," Itachi said, thinking of the time engraved skin and loose smile. "She was a great woman. She knew so many things…"Itachi looked back at the grave," and she always had time to share it."
The little girl walked on her knees closer to the gravestone. There she repeated Itachi's action of tracing the letters. "Sakura You-ch-i-ha."
"Uchiha," Itachi corrected.
"Sakura Uchiha…" The girl repeated, looking back at the boy for acknowledgment.
Itachi nodded at the correct pronunciation.
"Sasuke's in my class and he's an Uchiha," the girl said happily. She turned back to the stone, her mouth forming the words 'Uchiha' over and over again to memorize it as her fingers continued to trace the letters.
Itachi watched the young girl go about her business. He felt no need to get away now, or a need to get her to leave. Being with her, and her being in her own little world, was like being alone. Or perhaps he really hadn't wanted to be alone in the first place.
He'd wanted Sakura. His Sakura. His Grammie. Not the little girl. But no want in the world could bring his grandmother back to him, or to the clan, or to the village. Death was savage, ripping apart lives of the dead and the living, mutilating hearts with invisible cuts that couldn't be healed.
It was only the emotion of grief, he kept reminding himself. Physically he wasn't injured. But his body protested; his heart protested; it was in pain. There seemed no lessening of it either; it wasn't like a cut where the blood clotted or the nerve receptors stopped their transmitting. No. The pain continued on, not dulling. It was like he was going to die himself -
"Do you want to meet my gran-gran?"
The girl's voice disrupted his conscious thought and the oddity of the question made the pain stop as he searched for an answer.
The pink head tipped to the side, right then left, until she seemed to take no answer as a yes. She stood and brushed off her pink dress, which now sported two green grass-stains, and extended her hand to the older boy.
He took it.
Immediately he was almost dragged by the little girl. His shinobi training got him to standing, but the persistent green-eyed girl had him trailing after her for several moments. She swung her hand causing the clasped fingers to become a swing.
"I've only met my gran-gran four times," the little girl said, showing the boy behind her four fingers on her free hand. "Ma has only brought me four times, but I'd like to meet her more. Your gran-gran too. When I come again I'll say hi. Will you say hi to my gran-gran when you come? Ma says she likes it when I say hi, so I say hi, but I don't just say hi I tell her about the academy and flower arranging and… and Ino… and… and I'll tell her about you and your gran-gran, maybe they can be friends like us. We need to introduce them," the little girl continued talking until they reached the bottom of the hill, where the civilian graves were located.
The civilian woman was lighting a candle at the grave stone and she only looked up with the little girl announced their presence.
"I made a new friend!" the girl sung out, her voice too high to be pleasant to the ear.
The civilian woman's eyes grew wide at the sight of him. Fear, he saw it.
"I am so sorry," the woman began taking her daughter's hand to pull her away from the shinobi before her.
He let the hand drop. He was once again the heir, the prodigy, the 'Uchiha.'
"There is nothing to apologize for," he said slowly, trying to be as calm as possible to not spook the woman further.
"I'm introducing him to Gran-gran," the girl proclaimed, picking up a carnation from the vase beside the gravestone.
"Sakura, Uchiha is griev-"the woman's sharp eyes looked back up at Itachi, the fear was still evident.
"It is fine," Itachi assured her, faking a smile he'd been trained at by his mother. At the moment, he'd prefer not to be so immediately reminded of his loss.
The woman nodded slowly, releasing the girl's hand.
"This is my gran-gran!" the girl said loudly, too loudly. She had stepped over the grave and turned to point down at it. She then put her hands on her hips, expectantly.
Itachi dipped his head and kneeled at the grave and traced the letters on the stone. Hakari Haruno. Either the little girl had no father or this was the mother's mother in-law, and the way the woman was straightening up the grave stone he was inclined to believe the former, for it was doubtful also that the Haruno clan (if it was that) was large enough for intermarriage.
The girl again collapsed to the ground and began plucking at the grass near the grave stone. She immediately began chatting away, talking of something about a friend by the name of Ino and about a hair ribbon. He zoned her out and nodded politely before standing. He watched the mother light a candle, and how she went about cutting grass away from the head stone. Was it done out of some morbid transfixion on death, or out of love? He didn't understand.
"Aniki!" two voices called from his right. Itachi looked up the hill, to the shinobi cemetery. One blond and black head appeared in his line of sight, followed by meshed grey. Kakashi had taken an unusual interest his brothers since their grandmother's fall, which had led, eventually, to her death. She had called in Kakashi and had spoken to him alone. Since then the teenager had reduced majority of his ANBU duties to stay around the compound and spend time with the little ones.
A small twitch of lips once again attacked at Itachi's heart. Only grandmother could make someone change so drastically. Nothing would be the same without her.
He immediately turned his head down to remind himself he was in the company of others and it wasn't appropriate for him to show emotion, he wasn't Shisui after all.
"Thank you for introducing me to your grandmother, I will be sure to stop by and say hello when I visit my own," he told the girl, excusing himself to return to his family.
"Take care!" the little girl waved as he set off towards the hill.
"What were you doing talking to one of our class mates?" the question came out more like a demand from his true blood brother. He always seemed to have somewhat of a jealous temperament about his older brother's time. It was adorable, for he acted the same way if his 'younger' brother, Naruto, spent more time with anybody then what Sasuke deemed allotted.
Itachi touched the forehead of his brother slowly. "She was paying respects to her grandmother as well."
His brother's face scrunched and then was replaced with a solemn stare.
Naruto clenched Kakashi's hand, making the older boy move slightly away for distance. Kakashi pulled the little boy's hand out of his own. Then the kid began bawling. "I want Grammie to come back!"
So did he, oh, so did he.
He gently wrapped his arms underneath Naruto's and then picked him up in a hug. "Shh…" He murmured, just like his mother used to do to him when he was a child. The kid cried harder.
It was ok though, the boy was only four. Itachi didn't mind the tears, unlike most of his family. The boy was crying for the two of them. He was crying the tears Itachi was not allowed to shed. Sasuke attached himself to Itachi's shirt, leaving the custody of Kakashi, the older teenager looked a little relieved.
"Are you ready to go home?" Kakashi asked, his eye looking directly at the grave and at the pink carnation on it.
"Yes."
Several weeks had gone by and missions had come and went, then there came the day were his mother and father looked upon their children with uncertainty. His mother was rocking back and forth on both feet, obviously she wanted to say something. Their father drank his night tea with more focus then needed. The younger children, of course, read their parents very well.
"What is it?" Naruto, of course, was always the one to break any amount of silence their household had. Sasuke looked up expectantly from his place beside Naruto.
Black eyes went to black eyes and the parents stood each other off, and the tension between them grew.
Itachi had been reading and Naruto's statement made him look up as well.
"Well," their mother stated, "I think they deserve to know."
Their father clicked his tongue in disappointment but said nothing. He was in agreement, but he had to look otherwise. He turned back to his tea, and the children's eyes looked to their mother, who had now been given reign of the conversation and information.
The woman turned and opened the nearest closet and then lifted down several large wooden boxes, each the same size. "Your grandmother gave these to you in her will, but she wanted you to wait another year before you opened them. But…" The woman's eye looked to her eldest, who's stress lines had become increasingly noticeable from his lack of sleep. "I think the decision should be up to you."
Closer inspection showed that each of their names had been carved into one of the boxes.
Naruto tackled his box with gusto that was unbecoming of any Uchiha, the parents sighed in unison having long since given up trying to shape the boy and his unruly antics. Well almost…
Fugaku cleared his throat and Naruto immediately sat up straight, yet continued frantically to try and open the box. Sasuke began rotating his in his hands. Itachi already realized that they were opened by seals, possibly blood as well; that way only one person was ever able to open it. How she had gotten their blood? She no doubt stole it from the Uchiha doctors' stash (they had at least several liters of every members blood on hand.) Such a box was an expensive treasure; he wondered which seal master she had gotten around to seeing.
He picked his up. "May I be excused?"
His mother nodded.
The length of the hallway to his bedroom felt too long and when at last he got inside his room, he shut the door. He set the box on the bed and looked over it carefully. It was not very light, but not heavy; curiosity gripped him and he wanted to throw himself at the box and rip it open. His hand instead reached out and traced the letters of his name. It looked identical to the way she wrote. He closed his eyes and sighed, there was no way he was going to be able to wait a year. He wanted her; already the clan was forcing weight upon weight on him; not to mention the other elders were beginning to hold a grudge because his grandmother's seat on the council was turned over to someone outside of the clan.
He cut his finger with a shuriken and began working on the first seal she had taught him.
There was the light sound of 'psh' as the box changed from a solid to a bottom and top. In a matter of seconds he opened the box, only to look down at several leather journals and an envelope that rested on top of them. The envelope had his name scratched upon it. He could hear the pounding of his heart in his ears as he picked up the envelope and opened it.