Chapter 10: Secrets of the Past

When their team stopped to set up camp for the night, Yuki sensei assigned Yamato and Itachi to retrieve firewood to start a bonfire for their client and Yoji to catch fish. Once the orders were delivered, the three of them ventured into the woods together. Not long after, Yoji wordlessly split from the rest of the team, headed towards the river to catch tonight's dinner.

Itachi and Yamato trudged in silence, save for the occasional snaps of twigs underneath their weight. The two of them came to a silent agreement that Itachi would take care of the left side, while Yamato collected wood from the right. Their paths would never cross. They wouldn't get in each other's ways.

Itachi bent down to swipe another dry twig from the ground to add to his hefty collection. He stood up, turning on his feet to head back to the camp. Yamato met him in the middle, hoisting an armful of sticks too.

"Do you think this is enough?"

Itachi blinked in surprise, partly shocked that Yamato had broken their established silence, but mostly because of the question that left his mouth. Two armfuls of sticks were far from enough to keep a fire going the entire night for their client. It was the basic kind of knowledge that every shinobi would know, one that Itachi expected Yamato would have learned from his previous genin team.

Was this his first mission outside of the village?

"No," Itachi responded flatly before proceeding to explain the theory behind how quickly wood burned, and therefore how much wood they needed if they wanted to keep the fire going for the next eight hours.

Yamato accepted his explanation with a muted nod.

Curiosity got the better of him. Before Itachi knew what he was doing, the damning question left his mouth. "Have you never been on a mission outside of the village? What happened to your last team?"

For a group formed with three genins from different teams, it was an unspoken rule to never ask about their past. Each of their teams disbanded for their own reasons, reasons which may not have been any kinder than how Itachi's team fell apart. They were the survivors, the ones who stuck with it.

Itachi expected Yamato to clam up and not answer – that was how Itachi would have reacted – but to his surprise, Yamato didn't shy away from it.

"I have never been on a mission that required us to light up a fire."

"So you have never been on a mission outside of the village?"

"I suppose you could say that," Yamato responded. What was that supposed to mean? "None of my missions took me very far outside of the village and they always concluded within the day."

That made sense. Despite both being genins of Konoha, their experiences could be vastly different. If Itachi ended up on a different team, one that wasn't outstanding enough to be chosen to become the Daimyo's escort, would that mean he wouldn't have lost his teammates?

Would Itachi still even be the same person?

After that short conversation – it was refreshing to actually talk to his new teammate for once instead of actively ignoring each other – Itachi was left to ponder in his own thoughts while they continued the laborious task of collecting twigs. Eventually, the two of them wandered off further and further away from each other as they ventured deeper into the forest.

It wasn't until Itachi finished gathering his last batch did he start wandering back in Yamato's direction. By that point, Itachi was approaching the riverbank which meant a shortage of dry sticks. Instead of sifting through the wet and dry twigs, Itachi decided it would be much more efficient to continue collecting firewood in a drier part of the forest.

Only when Itachi found him again, his gaze was immediately drawn to his hands. Unconsciously, his dark eyes bled red, the tomoes spinning rapidly as he took in every detail of Yamato forming wooden sticks from the tips of his fingers with clarity. Itachi even noted that Yamato purposely shaped them to be jagged and rough looking, giving off the impression that they were produced by nature rather than by a human.

Wood Style? Wasn't that a jutsu that only the First Hokage knew how to use?

Itachi gave away his presence when an audible crack emitted through the silent clearing as a piece of stick snapped cleanly beneath his weight. The half done wooden stick dislodged itself from his fingertips. Gravity took hold, sending it joining the small pile of firewood. Yamato spun on his heels, a kunai leaving his hand with deadly accuracy. The sharp weapon sailed next to his ear, close enough for Itachi to feel the zip of the air. The kunai embedded itself into the trunk of a tree with an audible thunk.

Even after realizing that it was Itachi, Yamato didn't say anything. Didn't try to apologize for mistaking him for the enemy. Didn't bother to explain his secret jutsu. He merely bent down, scooping up the pile of twigs he created and began walking back towards camp. Itachi fell into step beside him, mouth opening and closing as he wondered how to begin with his inquiry.

Normally, he wasn't one to pry, but that jutsu of his…

Not to mention, Yamato had displayed a great deal of mastery over the Wood Style yet never used the jutsu during their spars. The other boy simply stuck to his earth and water jutsus despite having such a strong jutsu in his arsenal. It didn't make any sense.

"Is the Wood Style supposed to be a secret?"

Yamato's footsteps halted. When the silence stretched between the two of them, Itachi briefly wondered if he offended him by asking. Maybe he was supposed to keep his mouth shut and pretend that he saw nothing.

Only when Itachi spotted Yamato shaking his head in defeat, did Itachi relax, marginally.

"I was hoping that you didn't see that," Yamato confessed. "But I would appreciate it if you kept it a secret. It's not quite something that I have control over and I want to work on mastering it on my own time."

Really? For some inexplicable reason, Itachi had a difficult time believing his explanation, even if it seemed logical. Although Itachi didn't know much concerning the mechanics of the Wood Style jutsu, one didn't exhibit that much control over the shape and appearance by not having "enough control."

Still, it wasn't a topic Itachi was going to push. Everyone had their own secrets to keep, including himself, and he respected that. If he didn't, Itachi would be a hypocrite.

After all, no one in his clan knew about his awakened Sharingan.

Why Itachi hesitated to tell them, he didn't know. What held him back was that uncomfortable feeling in his gut, one that warned him that something would happen if he did.

Terrifying consequences loomed over his head.

While the rest of his team was sleeping soundly despite the incessant crackling from the flames of the bonfire, Yamato silently hopped down from the branch. Tossing a glance over his shoulder to confirm that none of his teammates stirred, Yamato crept into the forest.

Although he was supposed to be on watch duty, Yamato figured no one would notice his temporary absence.

Only he never anticipated that the moment his silhouette darted into the forest would Itachi's eyes crack open. After making out the outline of a small figure moving away from the camp, his eyes flickered over to the branches where Yamato was supposed to be keeping guard.

Gone.

Slipping out of his sleeping bag, Itachi took off after the mysterious figure. A sinking feeling appeared in the pit of Itachi's stomach as the thought of Yamato, kidnapped or dead, flashed across his mind. The urgency propelled Itachi to move faster, to close in the distance between them despite the figure's head start.

Itachi stopped short of breaking out of the coverage of trees. With his back pressed against the rough bark of a tree, he peered out towards the riverbank to see the figure had crouched down into a squat.

No trace of a second person.

The crescent moon offered little visibility, so Itachi was unable to make out what the person was doing. A sudden burst of chakra made every muscle in his body tense up, hand snaking around his back to pull out a kunai just in case.

Another chakra presence appeared. A summon?

The figure murmured something softly under his breath before Itachi heard the sound of paper crinkling. And just as quickly as it appeared, the summon puffed out of existence. The person stood up, brushing the palms of his hands against each other as if to rid the imaginary dirt.

When the figure turned, Itachi realized his worries were for nothing.

Yamato was the mysterious figure.

By the time Itachi returned to the village, there was still no news on Emiko's whereabouts. The timing of his impromptu mission led Itachi to believe that it was something the Hokage assigned him to keep Itachi busy, to divert his attention from the missing Uchihas case. Itachi appreciated the Hokage's kind intentions, but what was the point when there wasn't a single bit of progress to be made during his absence?

Naturally, the first thing Itachi did after the mission briefing was to head to his father's office at the Uchiha Police Force. Recognizing him to be the Uchiha heir, none of the administrative personnel stopped him.

"Itachi," Fugaku greeted, not even bothering to look up from the paperwork. He scribbled a signature to the document before he finally set down his pen to give Itachi his undivided attention. "I see you're back from the mission. You should go home and get changed."

Itachi didn't even know what kind of grime he accumulated spending over a week camping out at various locations across the Land of Fire.

"Were you able to find anything?"

Fugaku pinched the bridge of his nose with his fingertips. "No. We're narrowing down a list of suspects, but it's hard when we don't have anything other than a basic profile. Too many people fit that description."

"Has anyone else gone missing?"

"Thankfully, no. However, we tried to account for all of the Uchihas based on the records. I think there has been more disappearances than we originally thought. Emiko wasn't the first child to be taken."

"Are they all children?"

Fugaku nodded. "Mostly. The oldest one was a teenager." Pulling out a manila folder from his filing cabinet, Fugaku slid it across the desk. Itachi picked up the folder, thumb hooking underneath the first page to flip the cover open.

A picture of a young child, looking no older than seven, stared back at him. The face and the name wasn't anyone Itachi recognized, but when his eyes roved over the names of the boy's parents, Itachi knew why.

He was a half-blooded Uchiha. Just like Izumi.

Creases appeared along Fugaku's forehead as his eyebrows knitted closely together. "From the files, we began seeing a pattern in the kidnapping. The first happened months ago, but the victim was an orphan so no one really noticed. After that, the abductor moved towards kidnapping the children who are only half Uchiha. They don't live inside the compound, so we didn't realize."

And who's fault is it for driving them out? Itachi's mind bitterly tacked on, remembering his conversation with Izumi. Although his father never explicitly expressed his disdain towards them, but having been clan leader so long now, his father never helped to reintegrate them either. His entire leadership was built on the notion of maintaining the status quo.

"Emiko is the first child who lives in the Uchiha compound that was taken. The last kid to be taken also lives in the compound. If the pattern holds true, then…"

"Then the abductor will start coming towards those that are part of the main family," Itachi finished for him. The words "main family" left a bitter taste in his mouth; the distinction wasn't one that he liked to use. For all of their clan's criticisms towards the Hyuga clan, what made them any different?

A disapproving frown stretched across his father's lips, but he didn't refute Itachi's choice of wording. "I fear that Sasuke will be a target. Hokage sama has granted my request to give you missions that are in or close to the village. I hope that you can keep an eye on your younger brother. Spend a little more time with him."

"Of course."

Sasuke was only three years old, younger than the rest of the kids that had been abducted. Patterns and trends were normally trustworthy…but if Itachi was correct in his assessment that the abductor was going after the main family next, who was a better target than his younger brother?

The second heir to the clan.

And utterly defenseless.

The steaming hot tea had long gone cold. The plate of dango was half devoured, the other half saved for the person who never showed up. When the clock struck the end of the hour, Itachi stood up from his seat. The legs of his chair scraped noisily against the wooden floor. Taking the remaining sticks of dango with him, he abandoned his cold tea behind.

Izumi Uchiha didn't show.

At the crack of dawn, Shisui showed up at his front door with a mission scroll in his hands. Wordlessly stepping outside to not wake his family with their chatter, Shisui waited for Itachi to slide the door shut before launching into the details of a mission.

"My superiors issued me a training exercise. I have to take a genin with me; are you interested?"

"Where?"

"The Forest of Death." That immediately captured Itachi's attention. The difference was so obvious that Shisui picked up on the immediate attentiveness.

"I thought you would be interested," Shisui commented lightheartedly, yet there was a worried strain in his voice. Ever since his younger sister had gone missing, Shisui's usual cheerful front was nowhere to be seen. Around Itachi, Shisui was finding it increasingly difficult to keep up the facade.

Itachi nodded. "Yeah, let me go grab my mission pack and I'll be right out."

An incessant buzzing noise filled the forest, produced by the crickets in the aftermath of yesterday's downpour. The sun was slowly rising in the horizon, but through the thick forestry, very few streams of sunlight hit the forest ground. A slight gust of wind tickled at his exposed forearm.

Chills ran down his spine in a way that had nothing to do with the breeze. This was the place where the trails of the kidnapped kids ended. Although they had a training exercise on hand, there was an unspoken agreement between the two of them that they would use this opportunity to investigate further.

The Uchiha Police Force didn't want two children involved in the investigation. Regardless, they were determined to have a hand in it – they were too invested to stay sidelined.

Shisui cocked his head. "Ready?"

A firm nod and the two of them took off into the forest. Hopping from one branch to another, Shisui took the lead, hacking away at the stray vines and branches to clear a path for them.

Five minutes in, Shisui was three branches ahead of Itachi, leaving just enough room for a venomous snake to intercept Itachi. A sharp hiss and bearing its thin, long tongue and sharp teeth, the snake dove towards him. Pushing chakra to the soles of his feet, Itachi used the boost of chakra to propel him upwards. Hands curling around an overhanging vine, Itachi dangled in mid-air as his wrist flicked two shurikens. Each hit its target, sinking into each of the snake's eyes. The snake let out a loud hiss, jerking its head upwards in agony, just within Itachi's reach to dice the snake into multiple pieces with his sword.

Landing on the branch in front of him, Itachi turned back just in time to see the pieces splatter to the ground. Satisfied that the snake was taken care of for good, Itachi quickened his pace to catch up to Shisui.

When Shisui dropped from the branches, Itachi was quick to follow him. The soles of his feet landed in the soft ground besides him.

"The first rule of thumb in tracking is to look for unusual disturbances in the surroundings. Even someone who is an expert at covering up their tracks won't always notice everything. Like see here." Shisui's finger pointed at a seemingly nondescript pebble in the ground. "What do you notice?"

Itachi peered closer at the rock, noting the muddy smears that seemed to embed the smallest trace of a pattern. A pattern…that suspiciously looked like it was part of a larger footprint. The footprint itself was long gone, the signs either washed away by the rain or covered up by the person. The only incriminating evidence of their presence was in the form of a small rock.

"The mud on the pebble," Itachi answered. "I see faint outlines of an imprint, too perfect for it to be created by nature."

Shisui snapped his fingers. "Perfect. It's those small details that you have to watch out for. Let's get moving."

The two of them ventured deeper into the forest. On occasion, Shisui stopped to quiz Itachi on various signs of a human presence in the area. Following the little clues brought them to the rocky bank of a shallow river. Shisui climbed on top of the highest rock, eyes sweeping the area for their next clue.

They noticed it at the same time. Both surged forward to eliminate the distance to the blood-stained rock. It was the tiniest drop, hardly noticeable if one didn't look too hard, but it was there.

Blood. Was this still part of the exercise? Or was it a clue left behind by the abductor?

"Something is wrong," Shisui whispered. Whipping out a sealing scroll from his pocket, he spread it out across the bumpy terrain. Dropping the rock in the center of one of the unused sealing spots, Shisui activated it.

He stuffed the scroll back into his weapons pouch. "We'll take it back to Konoha's labs and let them test the DNA of the blood sample."

"Was this not supposed to be part of the exercise?"

Shisui gnawed at the bottom of his lip in concentration. "My team leader didn't mention it. We'll light up a bonfire to signal him."

Itachi nodded, following Shisui's orders to gather dry twigs to build their bonfire. The task wasn't easy. Yesterday's downpour had dampened most of the sticks to a point where the amount of moisture the sticks contained would snuff out the fire before it began. Itachi searched deeper into the wood, searching for those that were located in areas where it had been shielded by the thick leaves.

During his search, Itachi's eyes zeroed in on a twig snapped cleanly in half, like it snapped underneath the pressure of someone's weight. And then the clean slice in the bark of the tree. Charred leaves scattered all over the ground. Splotches of dried blood were splattered in the clearing.

Dropping the bundle of sticks from his arms, Itachi summoned Shisui with a crow. True to his moniker, Shisui hardly kept him waiting for more than a minute before he arrived. Upon his arrival, his dark eyes took in the remnants of the battle marks left behind.

"A scuffle," Shisui murmured. "I thought all the children that were taken were civilians? A civilian wouldn't be able to fight back with this much force."

"That's what my father's list told me," Itachi replied. "Although there are some Uchihas that are unaccounted for because he didn't get a chance to confirm with the Hokage if they're out of the village on a mission right now."

"Activate your Sharingan," Shisui commanded.

Itachi blinked in surprise. "How did you know?"

Shisui shot him a wry look. "Do you think I don't know you well enough? All I needed to hear was your teammate died and see you in your sulking state to know."

Itachi frowned but still allowed his eyes to suck at his chakra. His black eyes bled red, offering him a world of newfound clarity. When Itachi glanced over at his cousin, his Sharingan was already activated too.

"I need you to examine every detail of this clearing," Shisui was saying. "Our Sharingan will allow us to commit this to memory. In case the scene is disrupted before the Hokage's squad can come inspect, we'll be able to recreate it from memory."

"Then why both of us?"

"Just an assurance that neither of us miss any details. Between the two of us, we should be able to cover everything."

The two of them veered off in opposite directions. Itachi started from the left side, eyes slowly scanning that part of the clearing, in awe of what the Sharingan allowed him to see. Knowing the theory and experiencing it for himself were two completely different things. Too caught up with experimenting with what his Sharingan can do, Itachi didn't even notice his mind had begun to wander until he saw Shisui staring at him sharply from across the clearing. His cousin flashed some hand signals to him, one that warned him that they had a mission.

Right. Even if the enemy was no longer here, judging by the nonexistent chakra trail, that didn't mean they were safe. Itachi went back to work.

His eyes were drawn to a particular stalk of grass. Itachi stepped forward, squatting down to examine what had captured his attention. Something was niggling at the back of his mind, something was there and then among the mud, the grass, the leaves, Itachi spotted it.

A stray piece of hair. Long. Straight. Brown.

The victim's or abductor's? With a hoarse cry, Itachi summoned Shisui to his side. For a few moments, Shisui didn't say anything. He simply stared at their newfound evidence, eyebrows knitted tightly together in concentration.

Shisui let out a sharp exhale. "Retrieve it for DNA testing."

Itachi did as he requested. Hooking the tip of a kunai underneath the strand of hair, Itachi deposited it onto Shisui's awaiting storage seal. The hair was sealed away and the scroll disappeared back into his weapons pouch.

"It's not Emiko," Shisui whispered. "From the list, is there anyone who has hair that matches that one?"

Itachi racked his brain. The list was easily narrowed when Itachi tossed out a huge chunk of people based on the length of their hair alone. Then he worked through eliminating those who didn't have brown hair – easy enough considering black hair was their most dominant gene.

And then Itachi was left with one person, but the prospect of it seemed so ridiculous that he had a hard time believing it. It couldn't be her.

"Maybe the hair was left behind by the abductor," Itachi suggested. The moment those words left his mouth, his mind decided it was the perfect time to remind him that he hadn't seen her in weeks. She didn't show up at their meet-up at the tea shop. It had been almost a week since then and Izumi never sent word explaining why she didn't show or to cancel their next outing.

Itachi chalked it up to pressure. Despite what Izumi told him, the weight of judgment from the clan was quickly becoming too much to bear. Itachi could understand that.

Her appearance on his father's list was simply a coincidence. Izumi was out of the village on a mission. It was an emergency, so she didn't get a chance to warn him. Not having any sort of summons like his crows, Izumi had no method of reaching out to him. In a few weeks when she returned, Itachi and Izumi would resume their meetings and–

Itachi was quickly spiraling down the rabbit hole of making all sorts of excuses and explanations for why that strand of hair couldn't possibly belong to her.

"Who is it?"

Itachi's head snapped upwards. "What do you mean?"

"I know you have someone in mind," Shisui elaborated. "You're probably thinking it can't be that person, but that person is the closest match to that hair."

Itachi averted his eyes in guilt. "Izumi Uchiha."

Shisui's eyes flashed in recognition. "I know her. I've ran into her a couple times. She's genin level and–" His gaze flickered over to the charred remnants of the leaves. Seeing the distressed look on Itachi's face, Shisui knew better to verbally voice his theories out loud.

"It'll be okay. Even if she was taken, we'll find her."

Itachi could only hope that it wasn't too late.

A/N: Hi again!

That episode in Itachi filler arc in the anime where young Shisui takes young Itachi through a mission in the Forest of Death was one of my favorite episodes so of course I had to recreate it in this fic, although stakes are a bit higher despite not fighting anyone. Kakashi will also return next chapter :)

Thank you for reading! Until next time.

-MM