MEANWHILE
"Oh, where is that boy? He should have been here fifteen minutes ago!" Mikoto mumbled, sliding her black oven mitts off her hands and hanging them on the hook beside the stove. The scent of stewed tomatoes was thick in the air.
"Is oji-san secretly a vampire, baachan?" Samuru asked, standing on his tip-toes so that he could see the thick, red liquid bubbling on the stovetop.
Mikoto, momentarily taken aback, suddenly found herself overcome by fits of laughter, "Whatever would make you think that, my dear?"
The ten-year-old poked at the stew with a wooden spoon, cringing when the skin crinkled slightly. "You only make blood stew when oji-san's coming for dinner." He reasoned, as if this were a perfectly legitimate explanation. "And he has an unhealthy fixation with the color black."
"Hmm... weren't you and your sister planning on getting him a pink sweater for Christmas?" Her laughter seemed to intensify at the very idea.
"Hey! He needs something to brighten up that wardrobe! Besides, by the law of cute nieces and nephews, he is obligated to accept any gift that we give him or risk an epic crying fit." He looked around quickly, before adding underneath his breath, "And you know how easy it is for Makoto to turn on the waterworks."
There was an uncomfortably loud crash in the living room, followed by a grumbled, "I heard that!"
"Stop tormenting your sister, Samuru." Mikoto chastised gently, "Your Uncle Sasuke is not a vampire. He's just a little... eccentric."
"If eccentric is the word used to describe an idiot who spent their entire sophomore year of college sleeping in a coffin, then yeah, Sasuke is 'eccentric'." Itachi shuffled into the kitchen, using a wet rag to wipe a dark red substance off his hands.
A meat cleaver soared through the air, Itachi side-stepping just in time to avoid being caught in its immediate trajectory. "What have I told you about parading those bloody hands in front of the boy?" Samuru, undeterred by the sight of blood and the sharp projectiles, proceeded to catapult himself into his father's arms.
"Oh, because him witnessing his grandmother throw knives at his father is so much better?" Itachi rolled his eyes. And then, shifting the ten-year-old a bit in his arms, he grumbled, "What the hell is your grandmother feeding you? Bricks?"
Samuru practically blossomed under his father's attention, climbing him like a ladder to settle on his shoulders. He started to toy with Itachi's ebony locks, pulling it from the dark blue hair tie holding it in a messy ponytail and running his fingers through it like a hairdresser trying to evenly distribute styling product. Itachi finished cleaning his hands, before carelessly tossing the wet wipe into the nearby trashcan.
Nobody spoke of what Itachi did for a living. For all intents and purposes, he was in the employ of the Uchiha's weapons manufacturing business. He had a corner office, a full staff that reported to him on the regular... He brought home a hefty paycheck, especially considering he never actually sat at the two-thousand dollar birchwood desk that commanded almost the entirety of one wall in his office.
The particulars of his job were known only to Fugaku and Itachi himself, but it was not uncommon for him to return home with blood on his hands. He'd told Ritsuka that he was picking up extra hours at the local butcher shop - needless to say, she hadn't needed a great deal of convincing to be willing to look the other way. But Mikoto... she worried that the day was rapidly approaching where her little boy would be returned to her in a box.
She was broken from her rather macabre chain of thought by the sound of the smoke alarm blaring, and she turned to see thick plumes of black smoke coming up from the stew on the stovetop. "Mother, dear, much as I adore your cooking... I think the stew is past saving."
She flipped the pot over the sink and watched as small, black pellets rained down into the metal basin. "Gee, and here I was thinking I could just add some water and tada - the charred bits would just come right off." She quipped.
Itachi sighed, "So he can't have his tomatos - big deal. Makoto's allergic to them anyway."
"This is a special dinner to celebrate your brother's upcoming engagement. He deserves to have something special." Mikoto slapped her eldest on the shoulder, "Besides, I made a nice egg-bake casserole for Makoto. In fact -," she donned the oven mitts and motioned for Itachi to move away from the stove.
Upon opening the door to the oven, however, she found her casserole to be in an even more unfortunate state. It looked like an egg-bomb had detonated in her once pristine oven, with bits of bacon and sauce in every crevice imaginable. She shriveled her nose in disgust. Hours upon hours of hard work, absolutely ruined. Was this an omen for how the rest of the night was bound to go? If so, perhaps it wasn't too late to take Fugaku's suggestion to lock up the doors and throw away the key.
"Hn... there's always pizza." Itachi offered not-so-helpfully. Mikoto sighed, feeling even worse when her grandson began to cheer in excitement.
"Can I have anchovies and mushrooms, Papa?" Samuru asked excitedly, "And lots and lots of cheese?"
"Only if you promise I don't have to eat any of it."
"Deal!"
"I guess it's only a matter of time before the girl finds out what a wretched cook I am anyhow..." she uncerimoniously dumped the burned casserole dish into the sink, "At least the blasted dinner will still be hot when your brother finally gets here. Keeping his family waiting like this..."
"We'll be sure to order a nice tomato pie for our resident latecomer." Itachi said, "Samuru, grab the phone. I trust you remember the number for the pizza parlor?"
It was a typical evening in the Uchiha household.
Makoto sat at the piano, fingers landing awkwardly on the ivory keys. It was near impossible to determine the tune she was playing, as the music was disjointed and discordant. Fugaku sat on the couch a little ways away, thumbing through that morning's newspaper. He had ear-plugs in to mask the worst of the noise, but he made sure to nod and shout a few words of encouragement in the child's direction every so often. The smile Makoto gave in return was well-worth the little white lie.
Ritsuka was... well, nobody was quite sure where Itachi's young bride had wandered off to. This was not entirely unusual and was therefore not cause for immediate concern. Perhaps she would make an appearance later in the evening, or would not be seen again until the early hours of the following morning. Often, she'd return with little to no recollection of where she'd been or what she'd done - but she was usually in one piece, so the family didn't ask too many questions.
"The pizzas should be here in about forty-five minutes to an hour. I think that'll be enough time for Sasuke to pretty himself up for Sunday dinner." Itachi snarked.
Reaching up, he helped his son to slide off his shoulders and plopped him down onto Fugaku's lap. The man, utterly undeterred, simply flipped the page in the newspaper and announced, "Your wife's company is up 1.6 per cent in the stock market."
"Mmm... thinking about investing in a high-end brassiere for mom's birthday, pops?" A weaker man would've flushed. As it was, Uchiha Fugaku merely spit out a mouthful of chewing tobacco and wrinkled his nose in disdain.
"She'd need a set of knockers worth investing in, first." He replied blandly.
Itachi offered his father a wary smile, "Have I told you lately how endearing your misogynistic tendencies are?"
Fugaku, ignoring that last comment, cringed for an entirely different reason. The scent of burned tomatoes and eggs had finally wafted into the family room. "I told that woman not to waste her time cooking for that two-bit tramp your brother is bringing home -,"
Three bamboo skewers sliced through the air and imbedded themselves in the imported leather couch, just inches from Fugaku's more... sensitive areas. "What was that about me 'wasting' my time, love?"
"Nothing, dear."
Itachi wasn't all-together certain how his wife had managed to slip under Fugaku's radar - she was not especially violent and therefore able to manipulate him via fear, as Mikoto was, and yet, her femininity was not so understated that Fugaku would find himself at a loss for things to demean her. In fact, she paraded around the Manor half-naked most of the time. And if memory served, hadn't Fugaku berated Sasuke's soon-to-be bride for doing much the same?
Before he could put too much thought into it, however, his thoughts were interrupted by a vicious coughing fit. He barely had enough time to take the handkerchief from his back pocket before spitting up a mouthful of blood, much to his disgust and horror. Fugaku lowered the newspaper slowly, looking over his eldest son with a critical eye. He'd known for some time now that the boy was not well, but the sickness seemed to be progressing much faster than he'd realized.
"Perhaps you should lay down and rest awhile, son. Chances are your brother will not be here for some time yet." Fugaku said, his tone half-command and half-concerned suggestion. Makoto was, thankfully, still distracted with the piano and Samuru... well, Itachi wasn't quite sure what his little boy was doing.
"Samuru... are you painting ojiisan's nails? Where did you even get nail polish from?" Itachi asked.
Fugaku, remarkably, took it in stride. Well, about as 'in stride' as someone like him could take something like this, Itachi supposed. "Hn, the kid has halfway decent taste. At least there's one thing the old bat is good for - giving the kid a sense of style."
"You let mama paint your nails, papa." Samuru pointed out, his tone matter-of-fact. Itachi eyed his own chipping nail polish coolly.
"Maybe after dinner you can give papa a touch-up, hmm? Papa's nails are starting to look a little... nasty."
"Oh! I want to have my nails done, too!" Makoto spun around on the piano bench and rose to her feet, before skipping over to join the rest of the family. Brushing a short ebony curl behind her ear, she announced, "And pink! That bubblegum pink from mama's new line -,"
Samuru turned pleading onyx eyes on Itachi, "Can I do your nails pink too, papa?"
Itachi was about to respond when Fugaku cut him off, "Pink is a woman's color. You'll do your papa's nails black."
"Men can wear pink too!" The twins barked in unison.
"Who taught you that - the internet?" Fugaku made a mental note to cut their computer privaleges in half. "Besides, right now, your papa is going to go upstairs and rest a little while." One look in Itachi's direction was all it took to send him on his way, "Makoto, I want to hear you tickling those ivories. Samuru, you missed a spot."
"I think you made a wrong turn, Sasuke-kun." The district they were in was unfamiliar and terrifying. There was a man on the street corner, licking the gleaming silver of a blade, that winked at her as they drove past.
"I think I know where I live, Sakura." Sasuke said, not even bothering to try and disguise the snark. "Don't get your panties in a bunch. We're less than five minutes out - it's right on the other side of that bridge there."
As Sasuke approached the bridge, Sakura took note of what appeared to be a large lump laying on the asphalt. Originally thinking it was a plastic bag or a rather large rock, she wasn't overly concerned... until the headlights fell on it and it turned out to be a woman. "Sasuke, look out!"
The scent of burning rubber filled the air as the tires squealed and the car attempted to skid to a halt... Sakura distantly remembered her seat belt failing to lock, a sharp thud, and then everything going dark.