AN: This was the chapter of DOOM for me, and the reason it took me so long to update. Sasuke is rather emo, but hopefully it's out of his system now. ^^

Comments very much appreciate!

Sasuke's shoulders had relaxed once Potter was back in the room. Sasuke trusted Kakashi-sensei. He trusted in the man's abilities. But having Potter back where Sasuke could personally guard him made it easier to relax. He should have known better than to let his guard down around his Hokage. She had a knack, eerily similar to Naruto, for catching people unaware.

"Sasuke!" the Hokage snapped. "I think you ought to explain why Harry-kun is here."

Sasuke clenched his fist.

She wanted him to explain why Harry was here.

She wanted him to explain Itachi.

He had the sudden urge to stab something. Or even worse – run away.

Sasuke dug his fingernails into his palm hard enough to drag blood. He was a Uchiha, damn it. He had promised himself that he would not let this control him ever again. Inexplicitly, however, Sasuke found himself glancing over towards Naruto. The last person he wanted trying to explain something as – delicate – as his family was Naruto. But Naruto didn't know the meaning of not knowing what to say.

Naruto caught his look and smiled weakly. There was no show of bravado or brashness, just a friendly shrug. Like it was just that simple.

"Our fathers were related," Sasuke stated firmly before he had a chance to think about it any further. There would be no way to explain it that wasn't going to be terrible and painful.

Potter turned to face him. "What?" he asked weakly.

"Brothers." He couldn't help the snarl that came out with that one simple word.

"Teme." Naruto growled only the one word but Sasuke got the point.

"They were brothers," he managed to say in a much more normal tone. Potter blinked before looking slowly from each person in the room to the next. He didn't believe him. "James Potter - adopted by Harold and Elaine Potter – originally named Uchiha Jin," Sasuke recited. He'd memorized the papers found in his father's office, what was left of them, that was. It was likely they would never know exactly what Itachi had taken, but there was still enough proof.

But Potter still shook his head. "There must be some kind of mistake."

"Born March 27, 1960," Sasuke continued, "died October 31, 1981. Wife Lily Potter, also died October 31, 1981."

Potter stared at him, fists clenched. "This isn't funny," he growled. "My parents' deaths are a matter of public record."

"My father recorded this information personally within a clan document." A document Sasuke hadn't even realized was there. Something so simple but filled with the history and loss of his family. Every birth had been recorded. Every marriage and every death. Every Genin, Chuunin and Jounin promotion. Everything perfectly maintained with the kind of meticulousness Sasuke remembered of his father. It was a duty Sasuke himself intended to continue as soon as possible. "I assure you, the information is reliable."

Potter's eyes were wide and his breathing erratic. He was not taking this well. Sasuke breathed in slowly and tried to prepare himself for the battle ahead during this lull. He would remain calm. Keeping a level head was important in any situation. And he had to remember that Potter was still just a civilian. He probably wasn't accustomed to receiving shocks like this. It was bound to make things more difficult for the other teenager to understand. Sasuke watched as Potter's eyes darted from one person to the next and waited.

Finally, Potter looked up. His thick glasses made it a little more difficult to read his expressions. It was an old-school shinobi trick that Potter must have stumbled upon by coincidence – because all of the emotions Sasuke had expected to see were oddly absent. He had expected surprise, confusion, maybe even denial, but not anger.

"I don't have any family," Potter finally snapped back. His voice seemed unnaturally loud in the still silence of the Hokage's office.

Sasuke flinched. He didn't know why, but he did. He knew explaining all of this would not be simple but he hadn't expected to have this level of hatred directed at him.

"Sasuke's your family!" Naruto objected, metaphysically throwing himself into the fray.

"Shut up!" Potter screamed, going from calm denial to painfully loud aggression from one second to the next. "They're dead! You didn't know them! You had nothing to do with them! I should have know this was nothing but a big lie. What is it that you want? Just shut up about my parents, stop lying and tell me what you want!"

"Oh, be quiet, noisy child!" the Hokage snapped sharply. Sasuke kept his eyes focused on Naruto. It was just more simplistic to avoid meeting Potter's furious glare. He' been foolish to think this would be any easier. Dealing with people was not something Sasuke had ever bothered with before. People either did what he wanted or they weren't going to until he forced them to.

Of course Potter was furious. Who wouldn't be? There was nothing good left in his family, nothing it could offer Potter but pain and danger. Sasuke kept his face turned away, eyes on Naruto's frowning face.

Naruto didn't yell. He didn't freak out the way he would have when they were younger. He just stated calmly and confidently: "Sasuke-teme would never lie about his family."

Out of the corner of his eyes, Sasuke watched Potter's attention shift from him to Naruto. "I don't have any family," Potter repeated, but in a much more level tone. He didn't seem capable of maintaining his previous fury in the face of Naruto's soft assertion.

Naruto scowled in reply. "And just who were those people back there, huh? Weren't you living with your Aunt and Uncle? Are they nothing?"

"Not much more than that!" Potter snapped back. There was no mistaking the anger in those green eyes before Potter looked away. Sasuke was well versed in the many forms of anger. This wasn't the kind o anger that you flung outward and used to help you defeat your opponent. This was the kind of anger you held close, always, between you and the rest of the world in order to stay alive even when you shouldn't be.

Seeing it in his "new" cousin kind of made him want to break someone. The implications of who that someone should be weren't ideal. But an Aunt by marriage was not a Uchiha…

Naruto flinched and for a moment the silence dominated once more. Even Naruto seemed to have drifted into his own thoughtful haze at all this talk of family. It wasn't something the other young man could easily understand and that distance led him to poignant insights just as often as frustrated (and frustrating) incomprehensions.

Finally, Naruto shook himself, literally, out of whatever muddled road his mind had wandered down and grinned ridiculously. "So what's to say that Sasuke-teme can't be related to you? I mean, the Uchiha's are like the rest of the clans, they're all anal-retentive bastards at keeping family records organized."

"Dobe," Sasuke hissed.

Everyone ignored him.

Potter snorted. "A mysterious cousin from an Uncle that doesn't exist?" he demanded of Naruto.

Naruto just grinned back and shrugged. "Weirder things have happened. Trust me." Oddly enough, people usually did trust Naruto (eventually) but Potter continued to stare at him as if he was insane (which of course he was).

"You want me to just trust you, blindly?" Potter asked. "Why in bloody hell should I?"

Naruto shrugged again. "Why not?"

Potter finally glanced around the room again, as if looking for support from someone else in the room. "Because you might be trying to kill me? Cause this is probably a trick of some kind?"

The Hokage interceded with a very unlady-like snort. ""Boy, if we were trying to kill you, you'd be dead. If we were trying to trick you, you wouldn't know."

"Besides, we're trying to protect you!" Naruto added on. He seemed to think that if he repeated it enough, Potter would believe him.

Potter was more distracted with the Hokage to properly reply at first. It was always interesting, watching when a civilian fully realized that they stood in a room full of killers who weren't necessarily always as mild mannered as they appeared. Her simple statement seemed to startle him out of his ferocity. They stared at each other for one long moment before Potter slowly turned back to Naruto. "Protect me from what?"

"Clan politics," Sasuke announced, before anyone else got the damn nerve to say anything.

It wasn't what he was supposed to say. He knew that.

He just…couldn't. When the time came to try to explain what that man had done – how could he? How did one explain something like that? …why did Potter even need to know? It was Sasuke's responsibility to avenge his family. It was Sasuke's responsibility to keep what happened to them from happening to Potter. There was no vital reason for him to know the darker aspects.

Sasuke kept his eyes focused on Potter, but he was a good enough ninja to know how the others were reacting. Sakura nearly objected, but at the last moment she managed to hide her scandalized expression. Naruto looked confused, but that was natural for him. The Hokage went so far as to clearly roll her eyes, but she kept her opinion from Potter's notice.

"Huh?"

Sasuke's fingers twitched. Why couldn't Potter just accept that as a very good reason and leave everything else well enough alone? "The Uchiha clan was one of the most powerful clans in Konoha. That makes being connected to the Uchiha clan dangerous. That – man – was trying to kill you because you are a Uchiha."

Nothing he said was a lie. It wasn't even particularly deceitful. It just omitted a hell of a lot. And for the time being, Sasuke was going to keep it that way. He sent a subtle glare around the room to make sure it would.

Potter didn't notice. He seemed lost in his own thoughts. "You're serious?"

"On my family's honor," Sasuke promised solemnly. "On my own life."

Potter stared at him and Sasuke stared back. Slowly, Potter's eyes began to widen and they drifted in a daze till he was staring blankly at the floor. He didn't say anything. Sasuke and his teammates waited patiently. The Hokage yawned widely.

Potter finally seemed to notice how everyone was staring at him. He cleared his throat quietly. "So. This means I have another Uncle?" he asked.

Sasuke flinched. He had been expecting something, obviously, but it still caught him off-guard. "Had," he corrected, carefully keeping his voice as level and calm as possible. "My father was killed nearly ten years ago."

This time it was Potter who flinched. "I'm sorry." He said it simply, but the in the way only someone who did have some understanding could.

Sasuke accepted it with a simple nod, then returned with his own discomforting question. "How did your father die?" It was something that had bothered him since they first f? And more importantly, was Potter exposed to the same risks? It was obvious something was wrong with the other teenager's eyes. No civilian wore glasses unless they needed them, and Potter's glasses were thick enough to suggest he seriously did.

None of that, however, explained why his Uncle's wife had died the same day – and that unexplained variable left a sick feeling in Sasuke's stomach.

Potter didn't wince at the question the way Sasuke expected him to. He just hesitated, then answered. "They were murdered, by a criminal, when I was a baby."

As simple as that.

Sasuke stared at the other young man and wondered. Sasuke knew people died all the time, often seemingly without reason. He was a shinobi. He understood this fact better than most people. But the idea that a part of his family could just die out like that – disappear like everything else – left Sasuke feeling worse than angry. It left him powerless. Always too late to change anything. Too late to save anyone.

His fists clenched.

"It happened a long time ago," Potter said quietly. "There's nothing you could have done," he added off-handedly, like a unimportant after thought.

Being under the protection of a ninja clan would have done something. Maybe not Sasuke himself. He would have been an infant himself. But his father could have. If he'd… The what-if's that laid down that road were fatal.

Sasuke's fingers uncurled then clenched together again. He pushed useless thoughts away and focused on the present and what needed to be done now, late but better than nothing. Sasuke bowed, as deeply as he could and held it. "Please forgive me," he said. It was far too simple but he didn't trust himself to say more. He didn't know how.

Potter made a small strangled noise and even took a step closer. "Please don't!" he hurriedly replied. "I said it's not your fault!"

"For my clan then," Sasuke specified since Potter didn't seem to understand. "Please don't, it's okay. I mean, it's not okay that it happened, but it's not… Just don't, alright? It's creepy."

Clearly his cousin did not fully appreciate the importance and necessity of what Sasuke was doing. He straightened immediately, pushing aside his acute awareness of their audience. It was alright even if Potter didn't understand the situation. He didn't need to.

Before the moment could drag out into something uncomfortable Naruto interrupted. "So you're okay?" he said. "You'll stay then?"

It seemed like Harry was still going to object, but the Hokage cut him off. "Unfortunately, you're going to have to stay no matter what. A very dangerous missing-nin is hunting you. You won't survive five minutes on your own."

Potter's chin lifted and he stared back at the Fifth Hokage of Konoha like a disobedient student determine to prove a teacher wrong – more bravado than brains "I've managed just fine before now."

The Hokage's eyes narrowed as if she'd like to give him one of her "instructional" head slaps. Sasuke had seen that look often enough directed at his blond teammate and couldn't help the warning glare at seeing it directed towards his cousin. One of the Hokage's "light" hits would probably be enough to snap Potter's neck.

"What part of very dangerous missing-nin did you not understand?" she demanded.

Potter faltered under her stare, backing down and glancing at the floor. "I can't stay. My friends are going to freak out when they realize I'm missing."

The Hokage sighed and relaxed back in her chair. "As I said, I'm afraid that is unavoidable. Better here and alive than there at risk. I'm sure you wouldn't want your friends to get caught up in any of this, now would you?"

It was a sly, underhanded thing to say and Sasuke completely approved.

"Can I at least send a message?" Potter asked weakly.

Finally. Sasuke's whole body relaxed. He glanced over at his teammates. Sakura was back to smiling politely but brightly. Naruto immediately began arguing with the Hokage that a message ought to be sent on Potter's behalf. Naturally, the Hokage shot him down. While it was likely Itachi would guess that they had gone running back to the safety of the village, there was no need to advertize the fact that they had. Too much of a safety risk.

Potter's shoulder slumped a little more as the outcome of the discussion became clear. He merely didn't comprehend the situation, that was all. He didn't have to think in terms of espionage and information control… though perhaps Sasuke ought to explain some of it to him latter so he would think they were intentionally trying to stifle him. Sasuke had a feeling there would be a number of things about living in a ninja village that Sasuke would have to teach to Potter.

Potter would understand eventually. He seemed to appreciate Naruto's efforts. He seemed fascinated watching the ridiculous way Naruto interacted with the Hokage and her unexplainable tolerance of it. Potter smiled, just a little, at their antics.

Sakura stepped up to stand beside him, still smiling politely. "That wasn't too bad," she offered with deceptive banality.

Sasuke glance at her out of the corner of his eye. "Hn," he replied. "You had best tell him the truth – the whole truth – yourself sometime soon, Sasuke-kun," she said sweetly. "Before someone else does."

It wasn't a threat. Sakura wouldn't threaten him. The gentle rebuke, however, was quiet clear. As was the warning. It wasn't feasible that he'd be able to keep his cousin in ignorance forever.

But damned if he wouldn't try to make the peace of it last for a little longer.