Riruko rocked Itachi that night, on the other side of the clearing from the camps fire. She didn't much like fire, however the baby didn't much like being away from Karin, so eventually, the pair compromised. Riruko sat behind Karin, back to the fire giving Itachi full view of his mothers back.
The tension in the group had not faltered. In fact it very well might have been thick enough to cut with a dull knife. Naruto never left the rotten log, Karin and Suigetsu always returned to their seat opposite him, Sasuke sat sort of awkwardly in the middle, leaning more towards Naruto.
"I've got to know just what the hells going on here, somebody explain this mess," the blond pipped up, his tone of frustration was matched Karin's as she spat,
"Sasuke raped me that's what."
" I did not rape you!" Sasuke sounded surprised, maybe even offended. Riruko turned around.
"When I say stop, I mean stop! When I say don't cum inside, I mean that too!" Her language was sort of corse, Riruko thought, however she reminded herself that's just what outsiders sound like.
"You can't just change your mind halfway though," Sasuke insisted, a deeply unhappy look set on his face that vaguely reminded Riruko of his father.
"Yes I can!" Karin shouted back, " anyone can you asshole! Stop means stop!" She was standing now, hands on her hips, intently at Sasuke who was still, refusing to react. He refused to let her win. Suigetsu was facing away from her, so Riruko was unable to see his reaction, but Naruto looked shocked.
"Did you really Sasuke?" He asked in a tone that matched his expression while turning to the pale skinned man. Sasuke put his head in his right hand, sighed, and then raked his fingers through his hair.
"Naruto, please," he breathed but when he looked up only to see his friends harden face he got up, stalking off into the forest.
Riruko rose too, moving Itachi to her hip. After shaking her sleeping pig partner awake, she asked in their silent language to watch the campsite while she went with Sasuke. It wasn't safe for any of these outsides to be here alone. Buta got up and hobbled over to the circle around the fire, plopping himself down in Sasuke's spot on the ground. With his eyes placed on the side of his head he could see almost 360°.
Riruko walked quickly after Sasuke. She needed to catch him before something else did. Her eyes readjusted to the the dark after leaving fire as she jogged the last few feet to Sasuke. Itachi fussed, threatening to cry now that he was without his mother until Sasuke took him, stopping and holding him at arms length.
"All my life I was after one thing, I wanted to kill Itachi after what he did to our family. He killed our parents in front of me, but after I killed him, and he told me what really happened that night," he paused, leaving out the end of his story, "I just wanted," he paused, maybe thinking, maybe on the edge of tears, "and now look at you."
Itachi smiled at his father, he had his mothers eyes but it never dampened the fact that his face was the spitting image of Sasuke.
The eighteen year old Uchihia handed his child back to his surrogate mother. She held him tightly as he began to fuss again and bounced him slowly. Tired eyes drifted to sleep as his whimpering quieted.
"I saw you last when you were seven," she whispered as not to wake Itachi, hoping to stop Sasuke before he turned into a mess. She fondly remembered that summer she was twelve. That summer she played with the Uchihia siblings while their parents traded more modern things for medical herbs and items that could only be found in this forest. She remembered that summer they'd bought a much larger supply than normal. That was the year, she surmised, that the Uchihia clan most likely had been wiped out.
"We had so much fun when we were kids," Sasuke returned, his tone sounded more like it had before, calm and level. The way Sasuke looked at her, she thought maybe that look was regret, like he was sorry.
He should be. Itachi had been a good friend of hers, long before Sasuke had come. He'd come to visit her once after the massacre, wrapped in a black coat with red clouds. Her father was dying, ailing hard with a deep cough. There was no medicine to help either of them, Itachi was going blind and he was in a lot of pain, not just in his eyes. Something deep within him was wrong and nothing she tried could curb it the hurting so Itachi left, never to be seen again in this forest.
Riruko was still living at the compound still, the outer walls crumbling to the forest, her family dispersing until there were only a few left, the other elders, and they passed in a matter of three years. Only her father hung on, his lungs worsening until finally the house was quiet of his wheezing.
"Riruko," Sasuke's voice snapped her from the thoughts of the past and she was glad he did.
"We're going to leave tomorrow, I'm not exactly on the best terms with the village," Sasuke sighed. He didn't want to leave his child, he felt like he was dumping his son, abandoning him.
"Your son is in good hands Sasuke. I will protect him to the best of my ability."
Eight years later
Today, Sasuke couldn't help but feel a little off. Since the leveling of the village, quite a few things had changed. The Uchiha compound where he'd been living before he defected was never rebuilt. Though the roads were the same again, he'd been forced to build a new house. After inheriting everything after the massacre, money was never a problem, so the Uchiha compound was rebuilt in miniature, and the left over land was sold, and that was all fine and dandy until he realized he'd built the house to live in alone.
Not that Sasuke had always felt off, in fact most days he did alright, but the more he thought about it, the more he tried to figure out what was wrong, the longer it took to realize today was his sons eighth birthday.
For years he'd always dreamed of his son showing up at his door, Riruko and the pig in tow, to tell him that he'd always wanted to meet him, to tell him that he wanted to live with his father, but he knew that was impossible. Riruko would never set foot in the village, or so he thought until he heard a knock at the door.
Getting up from his armchair infront of the tv, Sasuke wondered with a scowl set on his face who could possibly be at his door. Swinging the door open, the eldest Uchihia couldn't believe his eyes. His face in miniature was standing, looking him in the eyes, hair down to his shoulders and a half grown, spotted hog at his feet.
"Are you Sasuke Uchiha?" The boy asked, his voice brave beyond his years.
"Yes," Sasuke was careful with his words. The last thing he wanted was to scare the child away. He kept his face emotionless per usual and his tone calm, with hints or warmth.
"My auntie sent me here to find you. She said you knew where I came from," the boy spoke with the mannerism of an adult, but with the words of a child.
"I do, in fact, know where you came from, yes," Sasuke tried to match his sons tone, "why don't you come in for some tea?"
The boy fallowed Sasuke through the house, and Sasuke noted that his son was very timid. He doubted that Itachi had ever been in a house before, much less seen anything inside one.
"Mr. Why do you have the outside inside?" Itachi asked, the strange place not dampening his spirit. One of the rice paper doors to the courtyard was open, the deer scare clunking rhythmically along with the water in the koi pond.
"It's called a courtyard, I built my house around it because I wanted to remember nature," Sasuke lied well, not that the boy would have known the difference.
"My auntie calls me Koton, my boars name is Buu, he's one of aunties pig's piglets!" Looking back at his son, Sasuke couldn't believe his ears. Riruko allowed his son to think he was named after a piglet? A man of the Uchiha blood named after a pig? That was enough to make him ball his fists.
"Why did your auntie send you here, Koton?," the elder kept his tone even. The last thing he wanted was to scare his son on their first meeting.
"I asked her one day where I came from, cuz she's my auntie, you know, not my mama, and I don't got a dad, so one day she just brought be here and told me to find you," the boy explained as they reached the tea room. Sasuke motioned for the boy to take a seat as he excused himself to make them some tea. When he returned, he found the boy sitting cross legged, with his head supporting his hands, elbows on the table. His mother must be rolling in her grave.
After serving tea and taking his seat, Sasuke watched as the animal skin clad boy stared blankly at the cup. Sasuke rose his to his mouth and took a sip, hoping Koton would get the drift. Of course he did, he was inexperienced, but not stupid.
"So, where'd I come from?" The boy blurted, never in his life had Sasuke seen a child so forward, not even Naruto when they were children.
"Contrary to your belief, you do have a father, and you have a mother too," Sasuke spoke slowly, as bad as he wanted to just come out and tell the kid the was he dad, something told him he needed to put it delicately, "long ago, I began traveling with a girl named Karin, to help me in this sort of group out to try to kill my brother, and after everything was all said and done, we became involved with each other," Sasuke explained, however he was cut off mid sentence.
"You guys did it? I'm not dumb, I know how baby's are made," Koton blurted, Sasuke wasn't sure how to respond. The loud mouthed kid didn't even seem embarrassed after that outburst, and Sasuke was sure he looked stupid with his mouth hanging open.
"Get on with the story!" The boy urged, "what's that got to do with me?"
"Well," Sasuke cleared his throat, " yes we were romantically involved, however, there were two mishaps that came from it. The first I won't go into detail about, but the second was a child."
It took a few seconds for it to all sink in for the boy. Sasuke could almost see him putting together the puzzle in his head.
"Your my daddy? How come I ain't never seen you before?" The child's face wrinkled in confusion, frustration, and anger alike, though his tone sounded like he might cry any second now.
"It was beyond my control, there were some people that insisted that you live with your auntie," Sasuke explained, thinking back to the meeting he'd had with the council. When Karin refused his child, he hadn't been aloud to take him. The elders insisted he was not loyal to the village, that the newborn should be destroyed less it be used for a weapon or compromise Sasuke's agreement to return to the village and pay his debts. Tsunade, the old hang, he couldn't believe it when she stuck her neck out for him, and allowed him to place his young son in the care of someone else.
The child was silent save for a few sniffles. Sasuke wondered if he should try to comfort him, though he wasn't any good at that.
"Mr, uh, Mr. Sasuke, are you gonna send me away again now I'm back? I,uh, I wanna know you, cuz, I didn't know I had a daddy," it was evident by the sad tone that his son was near tears. Sasuke couldn't lie to the boy, he had no idea what would happen now.
"I'd like for you to stay. It's not up to me though, you must understand. Let's change the subject, move on to something more fun," Sasuke suggested, his face had remained an unwavering calm, though on the inside he was becoming more and more stressed out. The last thing he wanted was a crying kid.
"Like what?" The boy asked, rubbing his eyes with his fists.
"Tell me about what it's been like living with your auntie," Sasuke suggested. Sure it was a dumb, top of the head topic, but he needed desperately to get the child's mind on something else, anything.
"Well uh, we live in the forest, n, auntie lets me ride on the back of her big pig, and we set traps for food, n, then we go check other traps, and uh, we eat n go to bed. Sometimes we find berries n sometimes we go to this big uh, house thing when it's cold but it's not like your house,it ain't hardly got no walls," the child chattered. With his bad grammar and ugly habits, it was going to take forever to get him looking like a respectable member of the Uchiha clan. He hated to even think about things he hadn't seen yet.
"Oh yeah, my auntie said to bring this to you," that got Sasuke's attention. The boy produced a letter from hand made parchment from somewhere on his person. Hesitantly, Sasuke took it.
'Dear Sasuke,' it read, ' I find myself returning the greatest gift ever given to me. He's been asking for years now about a mom and a dad, and now is the time for him to find out about them. My health is failing, it's the same damn thing that got my father, bless it all! Remember that I told you that you owed me for this? Forget it. I just want you to take good of care of him, he is just as much my son as he is yours.'
Sasuke's arms felt heavy as he closed the note. Looking back at his boy, he knew there was nothing he could do for Riruko.
"How about I get you and, and the pig set up for bed, alright? You come with me, however the pig must stay in the courtyard," Sasuke instructed, and watched Itachi set the piglet gently in the courtyard. They used the same silent language that Riruko and Buta used,an understanding of partners, and the pig never cried, not even once, as Sasuke shut the door.
Of course Sasuke had built many bedrooms in his house, though only two populated the upper level. Sasuke's large master room was opposite the top of the stairwell, and a much smaller room was directly next to it, made just for this occasion.
"This is my room? Did you know I was coming?" Itachi asked, looking up at him with eyes that would forever remind him of a romance gone south.
"No, I didn't," Sasuke didn't want to tell him that the plain white bed and desk had been there since he had been given away, just in case. Little Itachi seemed content with that answer. The boy climbed into bed and looked around, smiling only slightly before laying down and curling up like an animal.
"Good night," came a suddenly very tired voice. It was just as Sasuke thought, the boy was exhausted from his journey.
"Night," Sasuke returned as he shut off the light and closed the door. Calmly he took himself into his bedroom before he let himself fall apart.
He was half naked in seconds, when had it gotten so hot? How long had his teeth been grit? Did he still have sake in the house? Heaving a heavy sigh, he finally pricked up the phone to call the only logical person.
"Naruto, meet me at my house at nine tomorrow morning. Bring a set of cloths for an eight year old."