GASP! Two updates in two days? When does that ever happen with me? Thanks to all my kind reviewers and especially to Sariasprincy, who wrote many nice PMs to me while I was working on this. I know it's insanely rare, but the muse was REALLY inspirational today, so you're all getting very lucky and receiving a truly fast update. You probably won't be lucky three times in a row though XD it'd be insane if I could finish a threeshot in three days =P

Here, the kids are ten (Sakura) and fifteen (Itachi), and we get a deeper glimpse at their feelings and such. No need to squint for romance in this chapter! Enjoy!

Disclaimer: Not making any profit off of this, don't own Naruto or anything of the sort, etc, etc.

Chapter 2: Communication

"Oh, Itachi-kun, before you go…"

He paused, turning back to give the Sandaime his full attention and wishing he didn't have to. Even clan heirs had the right to return back from ANBU missions weary, and he was especially tired after having spent most of the night and part of the morning sprinting through Konoha's forests to get Ibiki-taichou's message to the Hokage as soon as possible. But no member of the Uchiha clan complained to the village leader, no matter how grueling a night they had spent, running through the all-encompassing darkness of that moonless, starless night with only the powers of the Sharingan to keep him from crashing headlong into grasping branches.

So Itachi turned back, his face impassive, and waited for the Hokage to continue.

"I know this must be tiring for you, Itachi-kun," the Sandaime said, with rather deliberate apology in his voice, Itachi felt, "But I need you to inform Iruka-sensei at the Academy that he needs to cancel afternoon classes today and report back to me immediately after the kids have left for the day."

That was a runner's duty, a message like that worthy of someone of chuunin rank or less, but even as the thought of asking the Hokage to perhaps choose another for the task crossed his mind, Itachi caught the amused gleam in the old man's eyes.

For whatever reason, it drew his eyes down to the man's desk, where wizened fingers gently tapped a discarded shuriken that lay, almost buried, under the paperwork piled high on the tabletop.

It was like someone had drawn the blade of a kunai across his chest. Heat and pain blossomed like physical hurt, though the only sign of it showed in the miniscule tightening of Itachi's lips.

'Sakura.'

Since his induction into the ranks of ANBU two years ago, and the year before that spent in grueling training for the ANBU examinations, he had been too busy to spend even a moment searching out that rose-haired slip of a girl he had met four years previous. Save for maybe chance glimpses in the marketplace, the girl always walking close to her mother's side, he hadn't had the luxury to watch her practice with his old set of wooden shuriken as she gained both speed and accuracy.

It was nearly three years of nothing.

Though the run had left his muscles feeling conspicuously fatigued, he hadn't felt short of breath then. Strange how his lungs would choose now to seize up and refuse to cooperate, his heartbeat suddenly thudding loud in his ears as he took in a steadying breath.

"I will inform Iruka-sensei of your orders immediately."

The Hokage's smile was benevolent. "See that you do. He and the students are behind the Academy in the forest today, doing field drills." His gaze drifted down to his papers momentarily. When his eyes lifted, the young, masked Uchiha was gone.

The Sandaime's smile turned mischievous, youthful in spite of his years. He'd had his doubts at first, but apparently Shisui had been right. The clan heir was showing interest in something more than his duties as a shinobi, and they all had to do with someone at the Academy and shuriken. And it didn't seem to have anything to do with his younger brother.

"Interesting," the man muttered to himself as he tapped a finger to the shuriken on his desk.

A short sprint away, Itachi snuck through the foliage that encompassed the Academy woods that doubled as their practice field from time to time, locating with ease the tan-skinned Academy instructor concealed from the eyes of his students as he watched them from a sturdy branch.

The man indicated only mild surprise at Itachi's appearance, and the young Uchiha felt a small flash of approval. He had liked Iruka-sensei, with his unwavering good-natured personality and staunch loyalty to the village, since his own years at the Academy. It was good to see that the man, seen through the eyes of his ANBU training, had skill worth his rank to respect as well. Usually people startled more when Itachi materialized out of nowhere without even a puff of smoke to mark his entrance.

"Itachi-kun," the Academy teacher greeted with a swift smile, his eyes leaving the children for only a moment, taking in the boy's ANBU regalia. His gaze went flat, concern in every line of his features. "News from Hokage-sama?"

ANBU regulations made Itachi nod curtly, his eyes watching Iruka under dark lashes. "Hokage-sama would like you to cancel afternoon lessons and report to him once the kids have left."

"Understood." The man's warm, chocolate-hued eyes flickered again from the children to the young man perched beside him on the tree-branch, and noticed the set of that face with the dark gaze that flickered from child to child, searching. Iruka stifled a warm smile that he knew would have sent Itachi off like a wraith through the shadows. "The children need supervision, and if you could point out any flaws I've missed, I will be grateful. The children, as well, would be thrilled if they got critique from an ANBU member."

The words were half reasoning, half request, and if Itachi knew (or guessed) the underlying thoughts that incited them, he revealed nothing. With a nod of acquiescence, he darted through the trees to another part of the forest, obsidian eyes scanning until he found, without fail, the color of cherry blossoms just opening.

Sakura, her rosy hair a beacon in the forest, crouched at the foot of an oak and watched attentively as Kiba at the base of another tree held up two fingers, then dipped a thumb.

She made the barest nod, trusting the Inuzuka's tracking senses to accurately report the number of "enemies" sneaking up on them. They were evenly matched, though an extra member of the team would have been nice to swing the odds in their favor. Unfortunately, their side was stretched thin to distract the sentries from their main force, which would cut through to where their flag was kept to win the game.

A quiet rustle on the other side of the trees, then a near-silent exhale, alerted Sakura that the opposing team was close.

With a howling yip, Akamaru launched himself at the other child shinobi, and Sakura and Kiba followed suit, pouncing on their fellow classmates.

Above, watching the battle unfold, Itachi managed to suppress the wince as the Academy pre-genin went from organized to brawling in three seconds flat. All sense of order broke down, punches and blunted practice kunai flew everywhere, the group ending in an all-out melee until they broke apart, Kiba and Akamaru to one side and Sakura to the other. The other two shinobi children fell back, retreating as Kiba and Sakura incautiously threw themselves forward.

Sakura's hand slipped into her kunai pouch, and suddenly, the motion catching Itachi's notice, she stuttered. Her body stumbled, breaking the synch of her motions for a split second as she brought out a blunted kunai, and from above, a dark shadow plummeted downward and pinned her to the ground.

...

The breath was knocked out of her, hard, her body pitching forward to crash to the grass. Pain scissored through her as tears sprang to her eyes. A kunai blade, dull but insistent, lay across her throat; the gesture told her everything she needed to know. The one pinning her was Sasuke. No one else in the class had as much control, and her cheeks flared with shame and embarrassment at him seeing her in this state.

But there was no time to contemplate it, at least not enough to let the emotion overtake her completely, because at almost the same moment as she realized that the boy she had respected for the last two years and just recently begun to idolized for something more had her pinned to the ground like a lepidopterist's butterfly, a familiar pair of dark, regulation boots appeared in her line of vision.

The flashback was instantaneous and powerful.

Lungs empty of breath, her sides aching, she could almost hear the mocking calls of "Forehead" all over again, the smell of dirt and honeyed grass in the summer sun as familiar to her as the voice that had echoed in her head for weeks on end that season at the age of six, the self-assured voice that ordered her to "Stay," and "Watch."

Itachi hadn't realized consciously deciding to leave his perch in the trees as he watched the battle, but there had been something different about watching his brother pin the girl to the ground. In the split second before she had been slammed into the dirt, he had seen the wide-eyed surprise and fear.

In the pit of his stomach, an unfamiliar emotion flared, strange and hot and consuming. It snarled in his chest as he landed like a dark wraith, soundless on the gently billowing grass, struggling to contain the desire to wrench his younger brother off the immobile, rosy-headed girl.

The other three jerked back at his appearance, only Sasuke and the girl holding their grounds (Sakura had no choice as she was still Sasuke's captive), and all five heads turned at the sound of Iruka's call through the forest. A flag had been captured, the game ended.

His otouto shifted off the girl, paying her no mind as she got to her feet. Itachi made a mental note to discipline Sasuke for his lack of manners at a later date, pushing up his porcelain ANBU mask so that the Academy students would stop staring at him with the wary fear of children in awe.

"Aniki!"

"Otouto, Iruka-sensei needs to meet with Hokage-sama, so your afternoon classes are canceled," Itachi told him, including the other pre-genin in his statement as his dark eyes flickered from one face to another, lingering only a little longer on Sakura's that the rest. "After the class goes over the field drill statistics, please inform Okaa-san that I will be late."

Sasuke, realizing the words were from Itachi the clan heir as opposed to Itachi his older brother, even if the not-quite-order involved their mother, nodded once with a quiet "Hai," and headed off in the direction of Iruka-sensei's call. He was thrilled to know his brother was home from his latest mission safe, but it was apparent in Itachi's clothes and mannerisms that his aniki was not yet off duty. Sasuke would wait until then to talk to his brother.

The other pre-genin followed the young Uchiha's lead, trotting off into the forest.

"Wait."

Sakura, about to follow the others, froze. Though the order was soft-spoken and held no name to indicate whom it was directed to, she knew it was meant for her. The tone was utterly reminiscent of that incident four years ago. Feeling a flutter of nervousness unfold in her gut, sending a chill down her spine, she turned to fix the fifteen-year-old with glass-green eyes.

She hadn't really seen him, ever, since that day when she was six, and she was surprised to find how clear and yet unclear her memories were.

His clothes were different, that was easily noticeable straight off. The Uchiha clan outfit she had seen him in before had been traded for a regulation ANBU uniform, though apparently his boots were the same make as before. She hadn't perceived a difference when she'd noted his footwear, with her face once more pressed to the dirt. He was taller too, though he had seemed tall to her four years ago. Now, he had the height of rapidly approaching adulthood. And the voice of one too. His quiet alto had become a more sober tenor. The face had lost the very last vestiges of childlike roundness, now all sharp angles that were, if possible, more aristocratic than before. Lines that had been barely visible four years ago were now marked, making Sakura wonder just what had put them there. But his eyes were the same as before, serious, observant, but warming. The passage of time seemed so obvious as her eyes followed the tilt of his head as he appraised her back.

They stood there for long minutes, her watching him, he contemplating her, until Itachi broke the silence.

"Why did you hesitate?"

A flush touched Sakura's cheeks as he turned to lead them out of the trees towards the Academy; she could remember exactly what had caused that little stutter during battle right before Sasuke had tackled her. "I-I…"

"Sakura."

She didn't even ask how he knew her name; she was hardly surprised. Though she hadn't seen him in four years, she had heard plenty. Uchiha Itachi was a shinobi prodigy, a genius. That he would figure out her name if he wanted to…was unsurprising.

But the tone was unyielding, though not harsh, and so she unclasped the kunai pouch at her waist, holding it out to him as evidence.

Itachi's obsidian eyes widened marginally at her wordless explanation. Inside the pouch was the bag that held the practice shuriken he'd given her years ago, their sides grown more worn since he had used them. She carried them with her still.

The strange emotion in his chest seemed appeased by this sign of their connection; the exchange between them had stuck with her as it had with him through the years. In trying to grab for a practice kunai, her fingers had closed instead on one of these, and her mind had been temporarily distracted. It had been enough for Sasuke to find an opening, but Itachi could hardly find it in himself to correct her. It had been partly his fault, though he felt no remorse over it.

Plucking one of them, an oak round that felt, now, rather lighter than necessary, Itachi spun it on his fingertip to Sakura's wide-eyed gaze. Not usually one for showboating, it was irresistible when around this slip of a girl; her admiration was practically intoxicating. Itachi was glad for the training that had allowed him to mask his emotions.

He dropped the practice shuriken back into the kunai pouch, and then surprised Sakura by pulled a flat, leather packet from his own kunai pouch strapped to his thigh.

"Itachi-san?"

Instead of allowing her to question him, he held the packet out to her wordlessly, almost daring her to take it, until she accepted it. It was the work of seconds to unwrap it.

"Oh!" The word was hardly more than a gasp, an intake of breath at what she found inside. Twelve, gleaming shuriken lay inside, each one fashioned from tempered steel that he had paid half the wages of a month-long mission for. They were unmarked and perfect save for a tiny, five-petal flower inscribed at one corner of each one.

"It is impractical to carve name kanji into true shuriken," Itachi explained calmly. "It keeps the weapon from flying true."

Sakura shook her head, her hands clasped around his gift, even as her mouth formed words of denial. "I can't-,"

Inopportune, a thick branch fallen from a tree made her stumble again, and the packet in her hands slipped, a single shuriken scoring a line down her thumb. A fat drop of crimson blood welled up as Sakura bit back a soft yelp.

"You cannot return them now," Itachi told her serenely, surprising her with a quick quirk of his lips, a smile. "You have blooded them; they are yours."

With her thumb in her mouth, Sakura's brows knit together into a tiny frown, knowing he was right. Old shinobi custom dictated that first blood on a new weapon denoted ownership. It showed that the owner had paid for the weapon in blood, and Sakura had heard once that some of the older ninjas pierced the balls of their thumbs with new kunai for the blooding. By ancient shinobi tradition, the shuriken were hers.

"Thank you," she told him, smiling with uncharacteristic shyness. "For the shuriken and the lesson. I never managed to thank you…"

The graceful roll of Itachi's shoulders, managing to make even a simple shrug fill with the sharp power of a shinobi's strength, said that her thanks were accepted.

"I don't have anyth-," but she did! Warmth bloomed at her cheeks as she recalled what she did have to leave him, but she forged on, "I…left something at the practice tree a while back. I didn't know if you would ever go back and check, but it's for you."

And then, flushing crimson at her own temerity, Sakura dove into the melee of bodies that was her pre-genin class, leaving Itachi feeling a little like the world under his feet had shifted a slight bit downward and left him behind.

…

It was early and he was, once again, skipping breakfast for a fascinating slip of a girl, but there was no real ire in that thought. Instead, only anticipation lodged tight under his breastbone as he slipped through early morning mist to the clearing he had once practiced so diligently at. At Sakura's shoulder level was a distinct groove in the dead tree that he most often used for target practice; it appeared the girl had unerring accuracy.

But a little higher than that, where he had once upon a time made a circle of kunai points, someone had carved out a little hollow. And inside, gleaming and untarnished, lay his present.

Three small circles of metal strung on a cord, each resembling a crude representation in dull metals the sleek, deadly beauty of a shuriken. It was amateurishly made, but his heart, so calm in battle, seemed to pick up its pace at the realization that the necklace was made so because it was made with young hands.

Sakura's hands.

Skin prickling, it was with infinite tenderness that Itachi fastened the necklace around his throat, feeling the cold metal warm to his flesh from the gift of metal that imitated an implement of death but meant much more than that.

tsuzuku

The necklace being described...it's the one Itachi wears in the anime (and manga? I can't remember...). I tried to make it as much canon as possible without killing off the Uchiha clan. So the necklace still exists (and is given a bit of history to it), and Sakura still has a crush on Sasuke. Don't worry though, her heart is really Itachi's! He wouldn't have it any other way, after all.

No squinting needed to see the romance in this one right? The muse is feeling smug that she got me cranking out another chapter in less than 24 hours, but I'm telling her to stuff it. I'm tired and my brain is filled with stress and chemistry, and I don't need her sass XD

Oh and the custom of blooding weapons is a bit of a modification from something I read in Tamora Pierce's book, Squire ^^

Thanks all my great reviewers! Leave me another if you liked this chapter! And all those who haven't reviewed either! The muse thrives on reviews, we all know she does ^^

Aria, out.