As Itachi stood in the cemetery once again wearing mourning clothes as the dead are buried, he finds himself yet again wondering about what exactly life was...
Life dies.
Two of the most important in his life had died alongside many others. Looking at the twin graves that bore the Uchiha crest alongside the Konoha leaf, Itachi remembered another day in the cemetery, a question asked, and dead yellow eyes looking down at him as their owner, Orochimaru of the Sannin, had said that life was meaningless.
Life dies.
He remembers the battlefield, the ninja begging for water who had nearly killed him only to be killed himself as his father whom he'd been looking for came out of nowhere and saved him.
Life is meaningless.
He remembers the cliff, the crows, the decision to slow his fall down at the last second. The desperate skid down, down, down...
Life dies.
He remembers the sight of the pair of bodies as they were prepared for funeral. The grave markers rested above urns of ashes, cremated as Uchiha tradition dictated.
Life is...
A baby that had cried nonstop the day and night before and had refused the bottle that was so unlike his mother's nurturing breast cries once more. Uruchi, who along with her husband Teyaki runs the Uchiha Senbei, does her best to silence the baby that usually only stops crying when he was either in the arms of his now dead parents or Itachi's arms and no others.
Life is born.
He remembers the trip to the hospital as he worried that his mother was sick. He remembers her telling him how he's going to be a big brother and that he would have to be there for his little brother or sister.
Life dies.
His parents were gone. Forever. Replaced by cold stone markers, like the parents of many others. While he stands there seemingly blankly, trying to understand, there are tears on the faces of many. Including a tallish brown haired boy with a healing cut on his nose whose sobs seem loud enough to wake the dead.
Life is born.
He remembers his father's joy in the hospital as his father fairly danced around the room with baby Sasuke in his arms. He remembers his father's happiness as the man named his second son after Sarutobi Sasuke, father to Sarutobi Hiruzen, Sandaime Hokage of Konoha.
He remembers how his exhausted mother had indulgently looked on, love in her eyes for all her boys.
Life is born.
"Here, let me." Itachi says to Uruchi as he holds his arms out for Sasuke. The first words he's uttered since he'd been informed that what he'd feared a year ago when he'd run out onto a battlefield searching for his parents had come to pass when he'd least expected it.
Sasuke is laid in Itachi's arms, and the baby falls quiet, into a slumber that is far less fitful than the one he'd awoken from at the funeral of parents he would never know except through memories related to him by his older brother who had seen them in their unguarded moments when they were being husband and wife rather than Clan Head and the Wife of the Clan Head.
Life is born.
When they got back, he would see if he could maybe get Sasuke to take a little bit of milk like he did when his mother and father had left him in charge of him. It was for longer than he thought it would be when his parents had handed him the bundle in a sling and gone off somewhere, but even though his elders said he wasn't in charge, that a five year-old was too young for such a burden, he was in charge of Sasuke.
He was the only one left who could get him to stop crying after all.