Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Ah, shit,” Uzumaki-sensei mutters. The scroll he's holding bursts into flames immediately, and the toad that accompanied it disappears in a puff, and Itachi knows he's not the only one expectantly staring at his teacher. “So, guys, tiny bit of bad news.”

“What is it?” Inuzuka presses. 

Hana presses, he reminds himself, since she did tell him very forcefully to use her name. Well, technically, she said to stop being an untouchable, heartless ass, but the sentiment Itachi chose to extrapolate from that was to call her Hana.

“Call Izumi-chan too,” Uzumaki-sensi says instead. He's an open book, letting the frown play across his face. “Full team briefing.”

Itachi looks sideways, and Hana’s already staring at him. “I'm not going,” she says firmly. “Use your freaky Uchiha telepathy and summon her here.”

Itachi stares. “That's the Yamanaka,” he states finally, when she doesn’t fill the silence like he expects. “You should go. You're the girl.” Izumi is a girl too. And the client is also female. It makes more sense for Hana to fetch Izumi, considering Itachi has no knowledge on how civilian women behave when a shinobi sneaks into a tent.

“What the Hell is that supposed to mean?” Hana is dense, and she glares at Itachi, irritation morphing into anger before his eyes. “What- you think ‘cause I'm a girl that I should do all your little chores for you? Clean up after you and run around doing whatever you want?”

“That’s not what I said.” He can’t help but add, “Mutt.”

“Well, twerp-”

“Children, enough,” Uzumaki-sensei sighs. “Hana, can you get Izumi, please?”

“No,” she says, stubborn, leveling her glare directly at Itachi. 

He sighs again, looking so lost, and Itachi would feel a glimmer of sympathy if it wasn't Uzumaki’s fault that Hana and Izumi were even on the same team as him. As them.

But, shockingly, Hana breaks off her animosity to roll her eyes. “Haimaru,” she snaps, and all three of her ninken perk up. “Fetch Izumi.” And because she’s nicer to her dogs than she is to any of them, she adds a please at the end.

“Quietly,” Uzumaki-sensei adds. “No need to cause the client—or her entourage—panic.”

One of the three brother ninken peels off, trotting to the tent. 

Itachi, Uzumaki-sensei, and Hana are closer to the outer ring of the camp, past the civilians snoring, past the guards. They’re here, mostly, for decoration, but Uzumaki-sensei thought this was an appropriate C-Rank to take their new team on. Anyway, at the center of the camp, is their client. A wealthy noblewoman, and she’d requested that a shinobi be posted at her tent’s opening. On the inside. Just in case.

The three of them, plus the two ninken, sit in silence until there’s the faint rustle of grass. Izumi is there alone. “I left Haimaru to guard the client. Figured it was good to leave someone.”

“Clever girl,” Uzumaki-sensei praises, gentle as always, and she beams at him, and Itachi suddenly feels the urge to roll his eyes. He, very admirably, tamps down on it. “Sit down. We have some complications.”

“What is it?” 

“I just got intel from my shishou that there’s a foreign shinobi looking to attack our client.” He addresses all of them, sober and solemn. “He’s not sure what the motivations of the shinobi are, but he found out that the shinobi is definitely dangerous.”

“All shinobi are dangerous,” Hana interjects, unimpressed. Itachi’s inclined to agree with her.

“This team hasn’t encountered anyone higher than an B-rank, and it’s very likely that the shinobi is A-ranked, or even S-ranked.” His blue eyes are so very earnest, and there’s a shiver down Itachi’s spine. This feels like the moment before his previous team fell apart. Ominously so. “So if you guys see anything suspicious, or even think that something is off, you tell me. Understood?” Itachi nods, mirrored by the other two, and their sensei smiles. 

“It’s going to work out okay,” he reassures them.

“How do you know that?” Izumi asks, brow creased. It’s worry, most likely.

“We’ll deal with it together.” The smile is winsome, bright, and despite himself, Itachi feels a little energized by it. “As a team. Just remember to stay on guard, and to tell me if something feels wrong.” He ruffles Hana’s hair, since she’s the closest, and the girl squawks, a little too loud for the night, but Uzumaki-sensei doesn’t chastise her. He’s fond, almost. “Your gut instincts are your first warning sign. Learn to trust them.”

“Hai, sensei,” they all mutter. 

“Now, Izumi-chan, go back to your post. Hana-chan, you and the Haimaru Brothers take the east end of camp. Be cautious,” he warns them. “Itachi-kun, get some rest. You’ll be relieving Hana-chan in a couple hours. I’ll take the west end of the camp.” 

And that’s it. They split off.

The only stipulation Uzumaki-sensei had in order to agree to become Itachi’s sensei was that he made an effort to include his teammates. To be part of the team. 

And Itachi had agreed because he knew this is what he needed to do— if this was the price he needed to pay in order to get his brother’s former teammate to teach him, then so be it. He could handle dealing with Inuzuka’s brash antagonism and Izumi’s “sparkle-eyed devotion,” as Shisui put it, at least for a couple years. 

He might give up after a couple months, he thinks. An advanced promotion to chunin, even though the Hokage had banned those.

Hana and Izumi have taken to whispering to each other throughout the entire next day. They’re at the back of the travel party, but that doesn’t stop any of the noise they make.

Everywhere he stretched out his senses, trying to keep an eye out for the shinobi after Kanemaru-sama, they were there for every moment, sounding like sibilant hissing or the rustles of leaves. The hush whispers mangled his sense of awareness, only impeded by the sheer amount of noise civilians seemed to make, and even Uzumaki-sensei’s heavy breathing from beside him, but none of that bothered him—restricted his abilities—as much as his Kami-damned teammates.

The part that pissed him off the most, even though he didn’t care, was that the whispering was never loud enough for him to catch the conversation. 

He is sorely regretting every decision he’s ever made, but especially this one.

“We’re nearing our destination,” Uzumaki-sensei informs them, and Itachi has to lock every muscle so he doesn’t jump at the man’s voice. It seems too loud, too sudden, pitched to carry for the travel party, but Itachi has been on edge the entire morning due to the information he learnt last night. Every whisper feels like a problem, and every crackle sounds like an enemy. 

“You’ve made this journey before,” Itachi says. He knows it’s too flat when Uzumaki-sensei looks a little perturbed. 

“I have,” he confirms with a wry smile. “Though it was at a much faster pace, since I was with the Pervy Sa- I mean, Jiraiya.” Itachi lets him mull in the silence for a second until that second is too much for Uzumaki-sensei, so he keeps going: “We should be about thirty minutes out from Kanemaru-sama’s property. By foot, at least.” Awkward silence. “It’s a good place. Defensible. I mean, I’m not really a strategist—that’s more of Shikamaru’s thing, and Sak-” his voice falters, but Itachi knows. It’s not hard to extrapolate, but she is a gaping wound for everyone who is Uzumaki-sensei’s age. And older. And the Hokage. Sensei keeps rambling: “Anyway, we’ll have a much easier time protecting Kanemaru-sama there until Baa-ch- uh, Hokage-sama sends a replacement for our team, since, y’know,” he waves his hands as if attempting to encapsulate the situation, “and then we go back to Konoha—through treetops this time, thank Kami, it’s way faster—and then, it’s back to D-ranks and training for us. Y’know, normal stuff.”

“I see,” Itachi says quietly, and mercifully, Sensei shuts up. 

They trudge on for ten more minutes, monotonous, and the whispers still crawling on Itachi’s skin, and he even turns his head at one point to send them a sharp look. Izumi catches his eyes from where Hana and her are sitting on the roof of the last carriage, mouth hidden behind their hands, and something flickers across her face before she looks away abruptly, dropping her hand. 

The hissing sound stops. 

He turns back around, relishing the quiet for the thirty seconds it lasts before they begin again.

Itachi wonders if it’s a fair assumption to make that they’re whispering about him. But what could it be about? This time, at least. He’s been polite at the very least, which, for an Uchiha, is outright friendly. Izumi would know this. She’s the same brand of strange as Shisui, in terms of Uchiha behavior, but like Shisui, she’s also well-versed in their Clan’s mannerisms. Perhaps she’s explaining to Hana that he is-

That he’s what? Attempting to be friendly? Attempting to make the team work?

A throat cleared. It pulls him out of his thoughts and his attention goes to the sound easily. “I’m going to run ahead and check the path, alright?” Uzumaki-sensei tells him. “Just keep leading the group forward.”

“Is that wise?” Itachi asks. “Splitting up?”

“Someone’s gotta check the property.” He shrugs. “It won’t take more than ten minutes, completely.” There are so many flaws to the man’s haphazard plans, but Itachi keeps his mouth shut and nods. 

The three of them—loathe he is to include the other two in it—are capable. And this isn’t Itachi’s first C-rank. 

Uzumaki-sensei looks behind him to look at Hana, who, Itachi is sure was eavesdropping, shoots him a thumbs-up. 

“If anything goes wrong, you have the seal I gave you, right?” He checks with Itachi. “Okay, just activate it, and I’ll be here in five seconds.”

“Hai, sensei,” Itachi says, maybe a little dryly. He keeps his ears open, listening, hearing the hushed voices, but also hearing the near-silent footsteps of his sensei as he goes away, and Itachi centers his mind. He’s the most experienced person on the team, so by all technicalities, he is in charge. Which means he needs to put all his attention into this. Not into whispers.

So, he does.

The property is quiet. It’s night again, eerily so. Kanemaru-sama is asleep in a room located at the center of the house. A strange structure, but defensible. There are no windows for attack, and only one door which is guarded by “highly-trained personnel”—civilians, who have no chance against shinobi. 

“It’s a recently built property,” Kanemaru-sama had explained when Izumi asked about the structure. “Less than fifty years old. Younger than myself. My father had the central room built to protect gold, but I find that it’s much more effective at protecting people.”

Itachi had noticed that she didn’t seem all too fazed by the thought that a killer might be after her. He could respect her strength, even if her apathy was mystifying. 

Hana had taken the room closest to the entrance of the house. With the Haimaru brothers down the hallways, the proximity ensured that the entrance was guarded, and if there were attackers that entered through the front, that there was a warning system in place. Izumi took the same position, but at the back of the house. Uzumaki-sensei had placed seals across all the windows on the house, and more across the edges of the property, to signal if anyone breached the boundaries. 

After they’d eaten dinner, during the night debrief, Uzumaki-sensei had brought the three of them together and informed them that the mission was now a B-rank. He didn’t look too surprised, more resigned to his fate than anything, and Itachi was faintly reminded of his brother’s missions that went awry. 

“It’s always the first C-ranks that never work out,” Uzumaki-sensei muttered. “On mine, we got attacked by a rogue Hunter-nin and his missing-nin Swordsman partner, both of whom were S-ranks.”

“As in Kiri Swordsman?” Hana demanded.

He nodded. “It was crazy.”

In any case, Uzumaki-sensei had warned them that it’s better to be over-prepared than to be caught off-guard. For a genin team, they were quite prepared. And decently paranoid as well.

Uzumaki-sensei’s room was closest to Kanemaru-sama’s room, placed right at the curve of the corridor, and Itachi’s was parallel to his. 

“Get some rest,” Uzumaki-sensei had advised. “Whether we encounter the attacker tonight or not, it’s best if we can rest.” A short snort to himself. “Heh, that rhymed.”

“You used the wrong grammar,” Izumi had retorted, and their sensei just laughed.

Now, Itachi lying in his room, he can tell that Uzumaki-sensei took his own advice a little too far. The snores echoed through the walls, arrhythmic, inconsistent, and if they didn’t fluctuate as much as they did, Itachi could have used it as an anchor point to fall asleep. Instead, he tosses and turns, fading into sleep until a particularly loud snort knocks him out of the hazy daze, resetting the cycle.

After about four hours of this, he gives up. He sits up in bed, reaching for his pack. The handheld flashlight is taken out of the pack first, and then, a Bingo Book. Technically, Itachi wasn’t supposed to have this yet, let alone look through it, but the rules were loose when he could justify it through Uzumaki-sensei’s carelessness.

Another reason why the man was perfect to be Itachi’s sensei.

He knows which entry he wants to look at. She’d be…an A-rank missing nin. Maybe, S-ranked, but it is unusual for someone who was less established in the shinobi world to rise through the Bingo Book rankings immediately: she was only eighteen, after all. The same age his brother would be if she hadn’t killed him, and that reminder made it hard to breathe. Anger, regret, guilt, burning determination—too messy as emotions to feel past midnight.

So, instead of flipping straight to her page, he peruses the Book. It’s rare that he’ll have this chance again, assuming Itachi returns the Book before Uzumaki-sensei realizes it’s gone. Konoha’s Bingo Book is organized in a specific way. The first part is entirely Konohan missing-nin, only S-ranked, a relatively short section with three pages dedicated only to Orochimaru, the defected Sannin. He doesn’t activate his Sharingan for any of these, even though it might benefit him in his self-imposed mission. The people in this section are too old for her to have known, in any case.

The next section is S-ranked missing-nin, a significantly larger section. He flicks through it: Ame no Deidara, Iwa no Gantetsu, Hidan, Hoshigaki Kisame, Kakuzu, Kakuzu’s partner (Unknown)-

He pauses at that, reading the half-page of instruction. S-rank, Flee on Sight (Kill on Sight for tokubetsu and above), Kenjutsu specialist, seen with Kakuzu, bounty of -

He involuntarily makes a noise at the bounty, disappointed. It seems low for a Flee-on-Sight. A high price, without a doubt, but mismatched to its quantity and its owner’s rank.

The rest of the section is quite boring, mostly information he already knows from hearsay. None of them would come to kill Kanemaru-sama—that he could say confidently.

Itachi’s stomach drops. 

“Trust your gut.”

His body moves before he can, and he grabs the seal-tagged kunai. Something isn’t right.

But he hesitates before he can activate the tag. Uzumaki-sensei said to wake him if something was wrong, but if Itachi listens over the sound of his pounding heart, he can still hear snoring. Sensei’s snoring. 

If their very own S-rank ninja didn’t wake up, then why was Itachi’s instincts screaming at him?

He stills his breathing, switching off the flashlight. It feels like his heartbeat is growing faster, shadows playing with his emotions in the darkened room, and the feeling never goes away. It’s foolish of him, but he gets out of bed, dampening his footsteps with chakra. It’s his first time attempting it; not the hardest skill he’s ever undertaken. 

The door, blissfully, doesn’t creak when he slides it open. He looks down the hallway. 

It’s empty. Silent. Eerily so. 

Then, Sensei lets out a cracking snort, and it shatters the quiet. Itachi winces to himself. It’s much louder when he’s out here. 

It’s unsettling, however. Something does not feel right, just like the night that Aniki snuck out his window; at first glance, it was normal, routinely, even, but something in Itachi is rattled.

Well, since he’s up…he should check on the client. Just in case.

He palms the kunai in a firmer grip and steps out of the doorway cautiously. Footsteps near-silent, breath faint, he creeps towards the corner. Another abrupt snore nearly makes him jump—it does make him twitch violently. How the man doesn’t choke on his own snoring is an enigma.

Very slowly, he sticks his head around the corner. He sighs.

It’s the guards, poised in front of Kanemaru-sama’s chambers. 

He can’t sense anyone else there either, but there’s no one. There’s nothing. 

He’s being paranoid for no reason. His hand, though, tightens around the kunai. It’s an ineffective grip with the amount of tension in his hands, but if all is well, then he won’t need to correct it.

Itachi rounds the corner, plasters himself to the far wall, and he sneaks down the long hallway. They ignore him, even as he crosses them. They see him. 

They look through him. 

Or rather…

He realizes something very quickly, a nauseating rapid-fire thing: they’re not ignoring him. 

Glazed eyes—they’re under a genjutsu.

Something is wrong.

He should get sensei. It would be sensible, and Itachi is a genin. But if there’s someone already in the room with Kanemaru-sama…

The client comes first. 

He activates his Sharingan, casting a red glow in the pitch black, and oh, it is much easier to see . Both the genjutsu and his surroundings. There’s a shift in the carpet, a frazzled look to the guards that wasn’t there before, and there is someone undoubtedly in the room with Kanemaru-sama/

With that, Itachi leaps towards the door, making sure to make as much noise as possible so someone else in the massive house—someone like his sensei, or even Izumi—knows something is wrong. 

The door slams open, ricocheting off the walls, and before Itachi can enter, he freezes. He freezes, not because the client is dead, but because the woman killing Kanemaru-sama is-

“Haruno Sakura.” He charges forward, fixing his kunai grip on the way, but she’s faster, pink blur, she’s so, so much faster. 

He’s on the floor before he knows it. There’s a sharp pain in his right foot, disorienting, his head spins, and he feels fear. His Sharingan is still on, but he can’t do anything with it but memorize the exact shade of poisonous, light viridian her eyes are—he can’t move his body, he can’t access his chakra, and Haruno Sakura, Konoha’s number one missing-nin, blight to the world and blot on the Village’s reputation, is knelt by his face, leaning against the sword in her hand.

She smirks. “Cute. But arrogant of you,” her voice is a hushed sound, informing him, “to think you could do anything.”

Stretching to her feet, she leisurely stalks to where Kanemaru-sama lies, frozen on the ground with terror, mirroring Itachi, and if Itachi could blink, he’s sure that the deed would be done faster than he can process. He can hear footsteps down the hall, Naruto-sensei’s worried voice, but Haruno is as calm as ever, sheathing her blade. Itachi doesn’t twitch when she turns to him—maybe it’s whatever she did to him, or maybe it’s pure fear rooting him on the floor, in pain, freezing.

She turns his way, locking eyes with him again. “Try again in a few years, kid. I’m sure you’ll get somewhere by then.”

 Before sensei can breach the chambers, she’s somehow gone.

And Itachi can breathe again. He didn’t realize he wasn’t capable of breathing.

He can move again, but his leg is in pain, so he just rolls over. The kunai is still in his hand, clutched by him like a lifeline, and Uzumaki-sensei kneels at his side. 

“Itachi- what-” he’s panicked, worried, and part of Itachi is touched.

“I’m okay,” he rasps out, leveraging himself onto his elbow. “Check on the-”

“Yeah, yeah, okay, wait.” He steps over Itachi’s body, and Itachi forces himself up into a sitting position as Uzumaki-sensei kneels against the floor, checking for a pulse. Uzumaki-sensei shakes his head after a moment, and Itachi sighs. 

Of course, Haruno Sakura is an excellent killer. 

“Where are you hurt?” Sensei is by his side again. Itachi didn’t even notice him move, but whatever she did to him-

It’s disorienting. It was disorienting. Every sense is on high alert, but now, paradoxically, his brain registers the most powerful person in the house as a friendly, and he relaxes. “My foot- I don’t know what happened.”

There’s a thundering sound down the hallway, and Hana bursts into the chambers moments later, and Itachi very nearly throws the kunai directly at her because he-

He’s still out of it.

“Uzumaki-sensei-”

“Naruto,” sensei corrects him absently, whilst checking his foot. 

“What the Hell happened here?” Hana demands. 

“Kanemaru-sama is dead,” Uzu- Naruto-sensei tells her grimly. “I need you to administer first-aid to Itachi—Itachi, did you see who killed her?”

Itachi should tell him, but he-

“It was an assassin,” he hedges. “A woman. She has a decent knowledge of genjutsu.”

“Explains why the guards are unresponsive,” Hana mutters. 

“I’ll break them out of it,” Izumi says, and he whirls his head around, and he didn’t hear her come in either, and he must really be out of it. Everything is too bright and too dark.

“Itachi-kun,” Naruto-sensei tells him, gentle. “Look at me.” Itachi robotically turns his head. “Breathe. Take a breath.”

Strange. But Itachi does as he says.

The cold, the bitter, bitter cold he felt, eases though. He breathes again, deliberately, feeling the air go in through his nose, and something unsettled settles. 

“Deactivate your Sharingan,” Naruto-sensei tells him in that calm voice. He’s very steady. Itachi comprehends what he says, though, and he cuts the flow of chakra to his eyes. For one second, he feels unstable, and then, everything feels right again. “Okay?”

“Okay.”

“Did you recognize the woman?”

“No,” he says, and he knows it’s a little too quick, and he knows that Hana caught it, the way she twitches, but their sensei is distracted. 

“Hana, first-aid,” he tells her again, pulling himself up to his feet, and Hana approaches, switching places. “Izumi, after you get the guards out of the genjutsu, I want you to check the house again.”

“Hai, sensei.”

“I’m going to see if I can track this assassin down.”

“We’ll be fine,” Hana interrupts. “Go. Take one of the Haimaru brothers, if you need them.”

And he’s gone. And Itachi is left alone with his most hostile teammate after he was attacked by Uzuma- Naruto-sensei’s most hostile ex-teammate, by virtue of his other teammate being dead by the ex-teammate’s hands.

“You have some explaining to do,” Hana hisses at him, even as she hovers at his legs and pulls out her first-aid kit.

“My head is spinning too,” he tells her instead, feeling queasy, and then, he passes out.

“A concussion, broken ankle, and mild chakra exhaustion,” Shizune-sensei tells Itachi. “You can use chakra again in a couple days, however, considering you got back to Konoha in peak time.” She levels a look at Naruto-sensei. 

The man rubs his neck sheepishly. “In my defense, I thought it was much worse.”

“I’m sure shishou loved that excuse for cutting the mission short.”

“I’m sure she will—when I, y’know, get to telling her.” He raises his hands at the medic’s glare. “What? I’m here for my genin. This takes precedence over the mission report.”

“I mean, the client died.” Hana snorts. “Can’t really do much after that.”

“Well, we could have stayed back to help clean her body up,” Izumi suggests, and then, her eyes fly open, head whirling to Itachi. “Not that this wasn’t urgent!” She yelps. “Your injuries were super urgent, and I was just saying, but I wasn’t saying you weren’t important, just-” She snaps her mouth shut, ears pinkened. 

Itachi just stares.

Shizune-sensei looks faintly amused. “Right.” She puts the clipboard down. “We’re going to keep you overnight for the concussion, but you’re free to go in the morning.” She turns to Naruto-sensei. “You and the rest of your team need to debrief with Tsunade-sama.” When nobody moves, she snaps her fingers twice. “ Now.”

“Yep, yeah, okay,” Naruto-sensei moves towards the door, herding Hana, Izumi, and the Haimaru brothers out. “Okay, Team, let’s get outta here. Itachi, rest up, okay? Kids, out, out, out!” 

"You're only five years older than us, you fart!"

"Can't even call you an old fart—it's that bad."

Sensei sticks his head back into the room for a second. "I'll let your parents know that you're in here the moment we're done with the report, okay?" And then, he's gone.

Itachi winces in the privacy of his private room. His parents. Right.

This was going to be a drag, as the Nara say.

Shizune-sensei rolls her eyes, visible for Itachi to see. “Your sensei—endearing, competent, charismatic, and yet, a mess.”

Itachi hums, suddenly tired. He’d just woken up twenty minutes ago, but it was already too much.

His head hurts, though. He thought the concussion was healed. He thinks he says it out loud, because Shizune-sensei smiles, not with schadenfreude, but something a little fond. “That’ll be the chakra exhaustion,” she tells him. “Take a nap, Itachi-kun. I’ll monitor you.”

Generally, that would do the opposite of reassure him, but Shizune-sensei was a trusted member of the hospital force. And she had been completely sincere the past couple times they’d interacted, earnest and gentle.

Itachi closes his eyes.

He dreams of pink hair, a biting smile, blood.

Green eyes staring into his. Staring. 

He stares back.

He stares back for a very long time.

Chapter Text

Itachi, blissfully, does not have to stand before the Hokage and lie to her as well. 

He doesn’t think he'd get away with that. 

He just writes his mission report, still in the hospital, on the food tray, neat, no hesitation, uniform as always, and hands it into Naruto-sensei when he comes in to check on him. Sensei then proceeds to read it in front of him, ask some clarifying questions, confirm that Itachi really doesn’t know the assassin who killed their client, and then, he hands it into Tsunade-sama himself.

Bless Naruto-sensei. 

Words he never thought he’d say, but there are benefits to having him as his sensei. Like, he didn’t question at all why his Bingo Book was in Itachi’s room at Kanemaru-sama’s house, or why Itachi had a Bingo Book with him in the first place. And the added fact that after two years of silence, Haruno Sakura is finally active again, and Itachi's sensei is right there for Itachi to question about her. Eventually.

In other news, he also receives a four-week paid leave for his ankle, and Team Naruto is suspended from any more C-ranks in his absence. It’s petty, but he feels a thrill of satisfaction at the thought of his teammates doing work. Especially Hana; he isn't sure why exactly she despises him, but it ignites some trivial irritation towards her presence.

Later, the same day, his mother arrives to retrieve him from the hospital. She hasn’t changed, not in demeanor, not with the cotton yukata she wears, Uchiha symbol emblazoned on the back. She didn’t fuss over him as much as he expected though, which was a relief.

He can’t help but think of when his brother had been first injured, the smothering overprotectiveness that descended on him the moment he made it through the gates.

When they get home, it’s a familiar sight, quiet, barren hallways. 

“Your father is at the police station,” his mother tells him, and he hums, reading between the lines. “He said he will be back for dinner.” She glides to the kitchen, ever the kunoichi with her soundless steps, elegant steel. “Shisui-kun came looking for you a couple days ago. He left a note that I took to your room.” 

He perks up at that. “I will be off to my room then, okaa-san.” Shisui probably already knows Itachi’s back in the village, and knowing him, there will be an attempt to sneak into his room. 

As if sensing his thoughts, his mother turns to him. “Tell that boy that the front door is fully functional, if you see him.” She levels an exasperated look his way. “And that he’s welcome to stay for dinner.”

He lets his lips quirk up into a smile. “I doubt the message will stick.”

His crutches are devastatingly loud in their silent home, cracking against wood as he travels down the hallway to his room, wincing.

His head, which throbbed yesterday with every strain, is painless today, thanks to Shizune-sensei’s expert healing work.

He’d asked her some questions, and somehow, she’d sensed his interest as something more than perfunctory. She’d offered to teach him some medical jutsu. Itachi told her he’d have to check with Uzumaki-sensei. Itachi, at one point, had dreamt of being a medic, but his position and his mission had taken precedence. That, however, didn’t mean that he was going to reject her offer. Rather, it is another opportunity to understand his opponent: Haruno Sakura.

He’s going to kill her one day, after all. And to do that, he needs to know her better than she knows herself.

The note Shisui had left him is a very ominous: I live within your walls. 

Itachi doesn’t make a habit of rolling his eyes, but he indulges in it this once. He doubts he had this level of flamboyance when he was eleven—he doubts anyone was this irritating when they were eleven.

I live within your walls, he scoffs. 

Shisui could live in the main Uchiha House, but he’d refused okaa-san’s offer the first time, when Itachi was eight and Shisui was six. He’d also refused every time any of them had offered since then.

Itachi understands though. Living with his grandmother, alone, offers a degree of freedom, of anonymity, that living in the clan head’s house wouldn’t. 

But now, now that Itachi’s brother doesn’t live within these walls, and his otou-san tries his best to live at the police station instead, Itachi does miss having someone else other than his mother.

Maybe, then, this burden, this anger wouldn’t feel so helplessly large. 

Regardless, for Shisui to leave any note means he has found something relevant. Or something he thought Itachi would think is relevant—it’s a blurred line.

Itachi trusts that Shisui has found out something out—if he isn’t wrong, Shisui was posted at the Chunin Headquarters for this round of rotations in the pre-genin program, and from what Itachi has heard, things slip through the cracks all the time there, whether it’s lips or archival evidence.

He rests on the bed, waiting. Not completely unoccupied, however, since he also reads a book on chakra-enhancements to the body. 

Haruno’s chakra control was lauded to be the best in the village, a whisper that made it down to him even when he was an academy student, but control isn’t the only factor for raw strength like hers. Itachi has read every single book in the Konoha library about chakra-enhancements, but none of them explain her technique. The only other option, other than digging through his father’s personal library, was to ask the Hokage, but Itachi would rather take his chances with otou-san rather than Tsunade-sama.

About an hour into the book, Itachi looks up at the feeling of being watched. And sure enough, Shisui dangles upside down from the eaves, staring at him through his window. 

“Come in,” Itachi tells him. The house is soundproofed, but Shisui is well-versed in reading lips, so he does as Itachi said. Shutting the window behind him, he plops down on the clean desk surface, propping his feet on the arms of the chair.

“Hey, Itachi-kun! Heard you ended up in the hospital.”

“Okaa-san told me to tell you that the front door is fully functional,” he replies instead, dry. 

Shisui tilts his head, a guileless act. “Oops.”

“She also told you to stay for dinner.”

“Uh, maybe, next time.”

Itachi puts his book away, pulling his good foot closer to him. “You say that every time.”

“What can I say?” he asks, cheeky. “I love to flake. Did you get my message, by the way?”

“‘I live within your walls’? Really, Shisui?”

“Did you not appreciate the drama? What am I saying—of course, you don’t.” He droops, head held between his hands, overdramatic. “You just hate me.”

Itachi sighs. 

A few beats later: “This is generally the part where you deny that statement, Itachi-kun.”

He stares at Shisui.

“Ouch.” He looks up at him and emphasizes the point by placing a hand on his chest. “That hit me right in the heart, Itachi-kun. I’m hurt.”

“Shisui…”

“Fine! Be that way.” He shakes his head. “Always business with you.” More silence. “Alright, fine," he groans. "The juicy piece of gossip I picked up—" he leans forward towards Itachi, eyes glinting with mystery. "Haruno Sakura is active again.”

Silence.

Itachi shoots him an unimpressed look. “I’m aware.”

Shisui scowls. “Seriously?” He scoffs. “How did you even find out? Even Nara-sama was secretive about it when he was meeting with Kiba-sama.”

There is a part of him, tightlipped, that nearly stops him. He hesitates, but this is Shisui. “She was the reason our mission ended sooner than expected.”

He blinks. “Shit.” 

“Language.”

“I’m going to be a shinobi in two years, Itachi-kun, I think I can say shit.” 

He huffs. “She killed our client, Kanemaru-sama.”

Shisui leans back on Itachi's desk, pensive. “A civilian seems pretty low stakes for a shinobi like her. I’m sure the reward couldn’t have been that high.” 

“It was a C-ranked mission.”

“Definitely not high then.” He tilts his head. “Maybe she was injured recently? So she’s sticking to smaller game.”

Shisui would make an excellent shinobi one day, Itachi thinks, and he shakes his head. “She was moving too fluidly for that. And she’s a medic-nin.”

“So she’s working for someone.” His lips are pursed. “Presumably someone who pays well.”

“We can’t know.” Itachi puts the speculation to rest. “Where was she first sighted?”

“East, I think. Maybe close to Kiri shores.” 

“My client’s property was closer to Cha no Kuni shores.”

“So, she’s making her way northward then,” he states with all the confidence of someone too old for his age. “I can ask around, if you want, but I think the higher-ups are trying to keep this under wraps for now, because- y’know.”

Naruto-sensei. The man had a tendency of running off when it came to his teammates. There was a rumor, several years back, when Itachi’s brother had been captured on a mission out of the village, and Naruto-sensei had allegedly ditched his teacher to run across the Land of Fire to join the rescue team. 

Tsunade-sama must not trust him to react well then. The implications of that…

Itachi tucks that thought away for later.

“Is that all, then?” He asks Shisui. 

The boy shrugs. “Yeah, dude, nothing else.” He leans forward suddenly, tilting to Itachi with bright eyes. “So, how was it?”

“How was what?”

“Seeing her.” 

“She broke my foot,” he deadpans. At the beseeching look, Itachi sighs. “She was good. She was extremely fast. Genjutsu user, or perhaps got better at it during her hiatus. I barely saw her move, even with the Sharingan on, and she killed the client without hesitation.” The entire ordeal must have taken less than twenty seconds, now that he thinks about it. 

“I wanna be fast,” Shisui tells him forlornly. 

“You should take up running then,” Itachi replies, arranging his face very deliberately into complete seriousness. It’s worth the half-exasperated, half-befuddled look he receives. "I heard it helps."

"What would really help is, y'know, being fast." He slinks down to the chair from his perch. “Maybe I could force Kiba-sama into teaching me how to shunshin.” He sighs dreamily, going looselimbed, curls flopping back onto the desk. “Imagine how fun it would be.”

“The coercion? Or learning?”

Shisui snorts. “Both, duh. Not that you can talk about coercion.” He shoots Itachi a look. “Your entire team situation is a product of stalking and coercion—I mean, would you even have Uzumaki-san as your sensei otherwise?”

He does not reply to that. But Shisui’s words remind him of another complication: His team. 

Right. 

He needs to… talk to Hana, before she opens her mouth and reveals something that Itachi does not want known. Or, perhaps, if he takes the leave seriously and avoids her, she might forget. He doesn’t have high hopes regarding her memory retention anyway.

“Okay, I gotta go now.” Shisui swings to his feet.

Itachi frowns. “Already?” He was hoping to...well, hang out with Shisui for a bit.

He looks at Itachi as if he’s odd. “I mean, yeah.” Shrugging, he says: “Technically, I’m on a ‘break’—I’m sure Kiba-sama is itching to send me on some errands the moment I get back. Y’know, for being from the Inuzuka clan, that guy is such an ass.” He’s standing on top of the chair now, scowling. “Can you believe he made me take a message to the genin corps yesterday? That’s literally the genin’s job. This is both child and unpaid labor. Actually, that’s not the unbelievable part—he stuck a seal to ‘make sure I wouldn’t go snooping’, which is ridiculous. A seal wouldn't stop me; he should know this.”

“Goodbye, Shisui.” Itachi says pointedly, picking up his book again. 

“Bye, ‘tachi-kun! I’ll see you soon.” He blows him a kiss, and Itachi very nearly rolls his eyes again.

He waits until Shisui makes his double backflip from the windowsill into the garden before he sets his book down again, settling backwards into his pillows. 

What could Haruno have to do in the north? 

The lack of information about her frustrates him. If he was in a higher position, if he could get anyone talking about her, he would know something—anything. But she is one of Konoha’s biggest failures, second to only Orochimaru the Sannin, and the situation is close enough that those he can derive information from, refuse to speak of it. And, as a genin, he isn’t allowed to access her file either, not even through the Konoha Police Station.

Everything he knows about Haruno Sakura thus far has been meticulously collected by him through publicly accessible information, which is not a lot. 

He knows the timeline, though there are questions hidden even in the past.

She graduated at the age of ten with the rest of the Konoha Seven—the former Konoha Nine—and was placed on the same genin team as his brother and Naruto-sensei. For two years, she was under the tutelage of Hatake Kakashi, the leader and teacher of Team Seven, and two months after the Konoha Crush where her parents were killed, she began a part-time apprenticeship with the Fifth Hokage, Senju Tsunade. 

He doesn’t know why Hokage-sama took an interest in her, why she saw potential, because as far as he can recall, there hadn’t been anything special about Haruno Sakura. She was just a girl, not entirely interested in her kunoichi career and more interested in his brother. So how did she get an apprenticeship with her? What about her made her so appealing?

One year after that, Team Seven dissolves. Uzumaki Naruto undertakes a fuinjutsu-based apprenticeship with Jiraiya-sama, his brother becomes part of the Konoha Police Force to take the chunin exam, and Haruno transitions to a full-time apprenticeship with the Hokage. During her apprenticeship, she advances to chunin, then tokubetsu. She kills Akasuna no Sasori, proving herself to be a threat to the shinobi of other Hidden Villages.

Two years later, Haruno Sakura kills his brother and two Village Elders. She grievously injures a third. The Konoha Council is destroyed by her hand, leaving behind only Shimura-sama.

She proves herself to be a threat to her own Hidden Village, Konohagakure.

Two days after she’s arrested, she escapes custody, stealing away a chance for justice for killing his brother, and it is only years of keeping this rage under wraps that he gets his breathing under control. 

He unclenches his fists from his covers. He takes a deep breath in, lets a deep breath out. He takes the burning in his chest and tucks it away to another corner of his mind where the rest of his violent urges live, most of them pertaining to her.

There was no motive. The evidence that she committed the crime was Shimura Danzo’s testimonial written from his hospital bed, the blood-stained katana in the evidence locker, the mountain of information about his brother in her apartment, and three corpses. His dead brother’s dead body.

All this information he doesn't know, and he doesn't know if it's relevant either.

But he does know this: when Itachi is holding a blade to neck, he’s going to get an answer to every question that he has. Then, when he knows why, he’ll decapitate her and finally get justice for his brother.

The one mystery he can solve from the bounds of his own home is Haruno’s known abilities, at least. 

He’d forgotten about his mission backpack, the stolen Bingo Book, until his mother knocks on his door.

“Your sensei dropped this off,” she tells him, setting the pack down near the door.

Itachi very carefully plays at disinterest, barely looking up from his book. “Tell him I said thank you.”

“He’s already gone, Itachi-kun,” she says, amused. “How are you feeling? Does your leg hurt?”

He puts his book down, looking up at his mother. “My leg is fine, okaa-san.”

“Do you want any food?” She asks. She’s hovering, like he expected. This is standard behavior, he’s realized, after watching her do this with his brother when he was alive. He didn't fully expect her to hover for him, though. 

“I had lunch at the hospital before I was discharged," he reminds her.

“Any snacks, then. I can get you some dango, if you’d like.”

“I’m alright, okaa-san.” She frowns at him for that answer, but these two days have ruined his appetite for dango. “Perhaps later,” he concedes and hopes she forgets. An unlikely event, but…

“Alright, then.” She still radiates concern. “Did Shisui tell you if he was coming for dinner? I sensed his presence by the house a couple hours back.”

At this, Itachi frowns a little. “He said he is busy.”

She purses her lips. “That boy is always busy,” she murmurs. “Alright, then, I’ll let you be. Let me know if you need anything, alright?”

“Hai, okaa-san.” He picks up his book again, flipping to the page he was at. The words swim before his eyes. He waits with bated breath for his mother to close the door again, and the moment it’s shut, he’s off the bed. Bypassing his crutches, he hops to the door, muffling his footsteps with chakra.

Under the flap of his mission pack, resting innocently on top, is the Bingo Book.

He grins, an action that takes himself by surprise but satisfaction settles in soon. 

Quick journey to his bed, and he cracks the Book open to the A-rank section immediately. He needs to look at this as soon as possible, before his mother decides to check up on him again. He flicks through, rapid, and stops at the first page he sees pink hair.

Haruno Sakura. 

It’s an older picture. Possibly from her tokubetsu jounin I.D. The fat still clings to her face, even if it is slimmer. When he’d seen her, two days ago, her cheekbones were better defined, her eyes harder. 

This version of her peeks up with a bright smile and a purple diamond on her forehead. She has kind eyes, almost, the paragon of gentleness, like a doctor—he realizes, a little bitterly, that she smiles like Shizune-san. Perhaps like Hokage-sama as well, though he’s never seen her smile. 

Another question: what about her motive for murder triumphed her bonds with her mentor? Her sister-apprentice? Before she defected, she was a pillar in society—this version of her, smiling, makes it hard to reconcile the version he’d seen recently.

He sighs. Maybe he should start writing these questions of his down.

Her section is only one page long. For all that is known about her, village-wise if not by him, there is very little about her abilities. 

The Book cycles through everything he’s already discovered: A-ranked shinobi, Flee-on-Sight (Kill on Sight if jounin), wanted for treason, a high bounty—where is anything about her abilities?

Ah. Here it is.

Highly proficient in medical ninjutsu. Highly proficient in Taijutsu. Proficient in poisons. Utilizes Strength of A Hundred Seal technique. B- to A-rank ninjutsu (specialization in Earth). 

That…is woefully little. It’s nothing, actually. 

He’s heard more about her from hearsay than he learnt from the Book, and it is only his need for secrecy that he doesn’t throw it across the room.

That’s it. He needs to get his hands on her file. Either he breaks into the T&I archives, or he becomes a chunin within the year.

And, well, one is easier than the other.

Dinner is a silent affair. 

His father does not show, as per usual. After his brother’s death, his father had taken to secluding himself at the police station for most nights. Itachi hasn’t found the true reason why, but he knows it’s about his brother.

His mother does not attempt to engage him in conversation other than the bare minimum of asking to pass some things and inquiring if he wants some more tsukemono. Itachi finds comfort in the routine familiarity.

He breaks the silence, though, closer to the end of their meal. “Okaa-san, I’d like to go to the hospital tomorrow.”

She looks up sharply from her plate of food. “Are you well?”

“Yes.” He clears his throat. “Shizune-san offered to teach me some medical ninjutsu for field work. I was hoping to speak with her.”

“You need not travel that far, my love.” She takes a sip of her water. “The Uchiha medics can offer you the same training.”

“Wouldn’t it be better to interact with the main hospital?” Itachi inquires, trying to keep the flat demand out of his tone. “I believe the rapport could better the village’s view of Uchiha, especially if it’s the Hokage’s own former apprentice taking interest.”

Okaa-san purses her lips. He can’t tell if it’s disapproval towards him or the situation. “You should not concern yourself with the logistics, Itachi-kun. You are only a genin.” She sighs.

“I should,” he refutes. He sets his chopsticks down, steeling himself, fingers curling into his thigh. “I am the Uchiha heir, after all.”

It hits where he intends it to, and he feels a twinge of guilt. His mother looks a little lost. He understands. Her husband, his father, is meant to be sitting at her left, and he is who Itachi should be having this conversation with, one that would quickly turn into an argument. Her son, his dead brother, should be sitting beside her.

Instead, it’s just him and her, both alone in this big house.

“It will be better if I learn how to heal from one of the best,” he continues, gentling himself. “For the safety of my team and I.”

She shakes her head, but it isn’t as a rejection. “You’re growing up so quickly, Itachi-kun.” Her voice is heavy, and something small and hurt thrums in Itachi’s chest. She leans over the table and cups his cheek, her smile bitter, and he blinks rapidly. “I’ll walk you there tomorrow.”

“I don’t need my mother to drop me,” he protests, but it’s weak and it comes out thick. 

A small laugh leaves her. “Of course, Itachi-kun.”

They finish their dinner in silence.

The absence feels more exhaustive than usual.

On his clamorous crutches, he goes past his room, stopping at the one right by it.

The door is closed, and there’s an air of melancholy that surrounds it, but it might just be Itachi’s senses, his sentiment, clouding his judgment.

When Itachi was younger, he used to have nightmares. He wasn’t sure of what exactly, but on those nights, he snuck into his brother’s room with soundless footsteps and crept into his brother’s bed. His brother was never thrilled to see him there, but he never kicked Itachi out, and when his brother started to go on missions out of the village, Itachi used to sleep in his brother’s bed on the nights he wasn’t home. Sometimes, his brother came home late at night, groaning when he found Itachi asleep under the covers, and he shoved him over to make space for himself.

There’s a part of him now, seeking that same comfort, even if the boy who lived in that room is dead. Even if that boy hasn’t lived there for a little over three years.

The door creaks. He steps into the untouched room. 

His mother dusts it regularly, so it isn’t dirty, and he crutches over to the bed, ignoring every reminder in sight. The bedsheets are black, accented with maroon, and he pulls them back to lie in bed and curl into the sheets. A deep breath in.

It smells like his own sheets. Not a trace of anything else but the house that hasn’t felt like a home.

He lies there, breathing in and out, time slipping by. Faintly, he hears his father come home, the sounds of him eating dinner, the low conversation between him and okaa-san. His leg throbs, a reminder to take his pain meds, but he pushes through the pain and he just lies there in his brother’s bed, hoping solace overtakes everything else. He thinks of the woman who took this away from him, of the revenge that he must get, of the peace he will find when his brother is avenged, and he thinks of his brother.

It’s been three years since his aniki, Sasuke, died, and Itachi thinks he’ll never stop missing him.

Chapter Text

The fish flops dead under his hand.

Itachi, in a manner unbecoming of who he is, mutters: “Damn it.”

 It had shook, realistically, for about two seconds, and he foolishly let himself believe that this meant he had resuscitated it, but…

“You were closer this time, Itachi-kun,” Shizune-sensei reassures him, handing him a clean cloth to wipe his hands. “I believe the issue was that this body’s chakra was at a lower frequency than the previous one.”

“It’s been nearly two weeks of this,” he says, and it almost sounds like a whine when he plays it back to himself.

She laughs. “It took me three months to master this,” she tells him warmly. “You are already ahead in terms of progress—it only took you one week to read all the texts, and even less to convert your normal emissions to medical ninjutsu.”

“I had time.” And the Sharingan. 

He looks down at the fish, feeling his brows pull into a frown. It’s hard to ascertain the resonant frequency of another body, and fish bodies are relatively similar, if flimsy. He reckons it will take months before he can adjust it to another person’s, let alone the variety of people he would encounter for healing. 

“Practice makes perfect; everyone in this hospital will tell you that.” She shoots him a gentle, teasing look. “Even if you are a prodigy.”

“What was the quickest time you’ve seen it achieved?” He asks, curious, as she picks up the dead fish. He would hesitate, normally, but Shizune-sensei, during their first meeting, had firmly assured him that asking questions was the quickest way to learn and encouraged him at every turn to do so.

She hums absently. “Three days, but she was a medical prodigy, that Sak-” she cuts herself off as dread settles in Itachi’s stomach, staring at the basket of dead fish, lips pinched together. 

He feels cold, but he pushes through, tongue heavy in his mouth, asking: “Haruno Sakura, you mean.”

She smiles, more bitter than anything else. “Yes.” He is silent, waiting for her to continue, but Shizune-sensei does not sit in silence. Rather, she does sit in it; she just does not feel uncomfortable in it, not like the people he’s met. He wonders idly where she learnt that from, to keep moving even in silence.

Shizune-sensei drags the bucket of alive fish closer to him, taking care to make sure it wouldn’t hinder his mobility in any way. This is routine, so Itachi asks: “Are you leaving?”

She makes a noise of acknowledgement. “I’ll do my rounds, and I’ll be back-” she pulls a face, “-with a fresh pile of paperwork. You, on the other hand, can keep working on this while I’m gone, like usual.”

“Hai, sensei,” he agrees. 

She gives him a firm smile and picks up her clipboard from the edge of the desk they’ve been using as a worktable for reviving fish. Itachi focuses on his task at hand as the door swings shut. 

By virtue of this happening before, he knows she’ll take an upwards of thirty minutes for her duties, maybe longer if she decides to do her paperwork in her own office. It’s adjacent to this abandoned one that she set him up in, so if he has a victory or such an abject failure that he wishes to share it, then she is conveniently in reach, always seeming to know.

He prefers it this way, having to figure out the method by himself. And he’s thankful that Shizune-sensei had offered to teach him, even with her busy, busy schedule; she almost seems to work as fiercely as his father, a feat he didn’t know was possible.

His hands go to retrieve another fish from the bucket, taking care to not get his cast wet as he pulls it onto the table. Gritting his teeth, he steels himself. 

He’s going to get this soon, he resolves, and he activates his Sharingan, watching the chakra in the fish move. If he was better at using the Sharingan, or better at his chakra control, he would have gotten this—if Haruno Sakura could do it in three days, then he should be able to do this in two.

Instead, it’s been over a week and no progress. 

He rolls through the signs of medical ninjutsu, bringing the green chakra to the forefront. It’s more teal than green this time, and he wouldn’t have been able to note that subtle difference if it wasn’t for the Sharingan, and he makes a soft noise.

Maybe that's why his healing didn’t work as well. He huffs, irritated. He should have begun using the Sharingan sooner, even if he feels the drain on his systems quicker, because then he wouldn’t have wasted four more days than he should have. 

He cuts the flow to his eyes. Now that he knows what to look for…

His pure chakra manifestation is more of a white-ish orange, the conventional Uchiha tone of fire and lightning. To convert that to medical ninjutsu, he had to channel a specific fire-to-lightning-to-water conversion, since water was the element most naturally like medical chakra. But, instead of summoning the gentle green, it is a teal. 

He frowns, sitting back in his chair. He sits up again, though, to pick up the thrashing fish and place it back in the bucket, before resuming his previous position because he suspected this new information—this new issue—would take a while to parse through.

It’s a good thing he has one more week of leave, he thinks wryly. 

“‘Tachi-kun!” Shisui’s voice hollers down the street, and a part of Itachi winces at the attention. “Wait up!”

His crutches don’t allow for much speed, but he pauses beside an engawa anyway. Shisui is by his side in seconds. Itachi’s surprise must show on his face, because the younger boy grins.

“I’m so fast,” he tells Itachi giddily. “You saw that, right?”

“You were faster than usual,” Itachi agrees. He turns his body, and Shisui follows, both of them walking down the street at a sedated pace. They’re still in Konoha Proper, but soon, the gates of the Uchiha Compound will appear and it will feel less like they’re in the open.

“I met this guy—total weirdo, by the way, he was wearing a green jumpsuit—but he heard me trying to, ahem- convince Kiba-san to teach me how to shunshin-”

Itachi arches his eyebrow. “‘Kiba-san’?”

Shisui looks unruffled by the interruption. “He told me to call him Kiba, actually, but that’s a bit too far, even for me. Anyway, the jumpsuit guy, Rock Lee-san, told me to wear weights on my arms and legs during my runs, and I tried it out for a week, and Itachi, there’s already a difference.” He beams so wide that Itachi is a little disconcerted, and a civilian across the street does a double-take at an Uchiha smiling maniacally, but Shisui does not look like he cares at all. 

“That’s…an unorthodox method,” Itachi says slowly, but it’s plausible. Intelligent.

Shisui giggles, and Itachi cannot help but be faintly amused at his friend’s excitement. “Imagine how fast I’ll be in a month.”

“Impressively so, I imagine.” His lips quirk upward, infected by Shisui’s contagious cheer.

“This is gonna be so good. I should start wearing the weights everywhere, just to build up my stamina. I mean,” he tilts his head thoughtfully. “They are a little bulky, but the things you do for your goal, right?”

“Right,” Itachi echoes. He understands all too well. “Did Inuzuka-san agree to teach you shunshin?”

Shisui pouts. “No. He said I’m too young, and that there’s a reason why it’s an upper-genin technique. He’s so responsible; it’s annoying. I thought the Inuzuka clan were supposed to be cool.”

“Being near your menace must activate his responsible side,” Itachi teases, but it’s partially true, at least for Itachi. He finds himself worrying about Shisui, sometimes, like how he used to worry about his brother when he went on missions.

“I did hear something, though.” Shisui lowers his voice. It’s busy enough where they’re walking that Itachi doesn’t have to worry about eavesdroppers, but caution has been drilled into their bodies since birth. “It’s not about her,” he sends Itachi a meaningful look, “but it’s about the chunin exams.”

Itachi inhales sharply. “Oh.”

“I’ll tell you once we’re at your place,” Shisui promises. “But, until then, Itachi-kun!” He raises his voice to normal level again, smiling. “How was your lesson today?”

“No updates on my progress.” Unfortunate. “But I did figure out the issue regarding all the dead fishes.”

“Mhmm?”

“The color is wrong for medical jutsu.”

“Huh.” Shisui adopts a pensive look. “That’s…something.”

“We can discuss it when we’re back home,” Itachi says. “I will show you and okaa-san.” He isn’t aware if his mother knows any medical ninjutsu, but there is a very likely chance she knows something. If not, then she is an experienced jounin who is more than skilled in elemental jutsu. He knows she can help.

“Got it.”

The crowd gets sparser and sparser, until they’re past the civilian district, walking the familiar path through the woods to the Uchiha compound, surrounded by birds and silence. 

Talking…is not Itachi’s strong suit. It exhausts him. And Shisui is usually filled with endless chatter that’s enough to fill the silence for both of them, but his giddy joy translates to peace, apparently.

It’s pleasant. 

They approach the gates and are let through without any fuss. The compound itself is quiet compared to Konoha Proper, filled with people on the streets and hushed bustle. Itachi cannot remember it being any other way. His mother had told him that when she was young, the compound had been vibrant, filled with noise, but the compound they’d lived in then isn’t the one they live in now, location- or ambience-wise.

He concedes, however, that it had been much worse when he was younger, as far as he can remember. The air had always seemed fraught with tension, restrained bloodshed, but the past five years had proven to have some changes.

The only sound now is the steady cracks of Itachi’s crutches. He’s growing tired of these. They attract too much attention when all he wishes to do is slip in and out on his own two feet. 

“Itachi-kun!” It’s Izumi this time. “And Shisui-chan. How are you?”

“Don’t call me that,” Shisui says immediately, wrinkling his nose. “I’m not a ‘-chan’, Izumi-chan.”

“Not with that attitude, you’re not,” she tells him with a little bit of mischief in her smile. She sobers, however, when she turns to Itachi, becoming almost shy, and he fights the urge to sigh melodramatically. “Hello, Itachi-kun.”

“Izumi-san.” Itachi is curt. It borders on rude, but Izumi is used to him, to some capacity, used to his flat tones, so she does not take offense.

“I heard you’re taking some medical ninjutsu lessons at the hospital.” She nods. “It’s a sensible idea.”

“Hn.”

“When you get a bit more advanced, you should ask Hana-chan if you can work at the Inuzuka Clan’s shelter,” she says, and Itachi’s eyes swing over to her because what. “I-If you want, that is.” Her voice begins to pick up speed. “I know it makes good practice for using medical ninjutsu, and since Hana-chan has ninken, it’ll be good to know how to heal Haimaru if any of them get hurt, and-”

“I think it’s a great idea,” Shisui says, interrupting her, and Itachi looks at him incredulously. “What? You get dogs and practice!”

“I’m not looking to be a medical ninja,” Itachi tells them both flatly. He’s only in these lessons for information. Medic-nins don’t see enough action—when Itachi fights Haruno, he needs to kill her, which means he needs to get as much experience as possible.

He needs to get as much power as possible.

He has no inclination nor passion for violence; this is something that must be done.

“Of course.” The walk is quiet again after that, but now it’s more awkward than peaceful. When the Main House appears in view, Izumi excuses herself. Before she leaves, however, she turns to Itachi and blurts out: “You should turn up for the training sessions, anyway.” At his look of confusion, she squares her chin. “Our team’s training sessions, that is. I know you can’t do anything yet due to your leg, but by observing what training Naruto-sensei is putting us through, we can find ways to create a cohesive team dynamic.”

He doesn’t tell her he has no interest in this team, that he only plays nice because it’s part of the conditions that Naruto-sensei set, but he nods slowly. “I’ll see, next week.”

She beams at him, relief sprinkled all over her face as she walks backwards, away from them. “That’s great! It was nice seeing you both.” She spins on her heel and takes off.

“Bye, Izumi-chan!” Shisui calls out to her retreating back, and then, he turns to give Itachi a completely unwarranted look. “You know that’s a good idea, right?” Itachi grunts an acknowledgement. “Both of them, actually. You’re going to have to work with her during the exams, which means knowing how both of your teammates work.”

Itachi tilts his head. That holds merit. “Next week,” he repeats himself.  His cast will be off then, and all he’ll have to do is be careful for the following week while his leg reaches a state in which he can use it again.

They approach the engawa to Itachi’s house, and Shisui darts forward, up the steps, to hold the door open and yell down the hallways, much too loudly. “Tadaima, oba-chan!”

Itachi only struggles a little on the two stairs, but he enters not long after to hear his mother call down a gentle okaeri. “Tadaima,” he says, much quieter, but he knows his mother heard him.

His mother appears near the greeting room as they’re shedding their sandals for slippers. “Okaeri, Itachi-kun,” she says with a smile. “And Shisui-kun.” She aims the latter with a look. “I trust you’ll be staying for dinner?”

Shisui laughs, high and fake. “Well, actually-”

“He will be,” Itachi interrupts him and gives him a look of his own. “We will be in my room, okaa-san. Shisui requires my assistance with some Academy work.”

His mother’s eyebrow twitches like she doesn’t quite believe him, but she acquiesces with a nod. She watches them go down the hallway to the wing with the bedrooms. The layout is spacious enough that Shisui and Itachi can walk beside each other like they did through the streets, and Shisui slides the door to his room open without any hesitation.

Before the door even slams shut, he turns to Itachi, already perched on the desk like he always does. “So, chunin exams.”

Itachi hums, making his way over to the padded storage box in front of his bed.

“The next time it’s hosted in Konoha is at the end of the next-to-next cycle.” Another fifteen months, at least, then. It’s not ideal, or even good. The rate at which Itachi wishes to accelerate through the ranks does not match.

“Where else is it hosted?”

Shisui grimaces slightly. “Kumo,” he says, “then Kiri.”

“Kiri?” He had heard of the resistance movement against the Yondaime Mizukage, Karatachi Yagura, but he hadn’t realized it had come to an end. With the way it was discussed, he assumed it would have taken longer for a new Mizukage to take place.

“Yeah, I know, that was a bit of a surprise. But the new Mizukage, Terumi Mei, reached out, claiming that her reign began two months ago, and offered to host the exams at Kiri in nine months.” Shisui shakes his head. “That’s not the point—you cannot take the exams at Kumo. You will not be able to.”

Shisui is right, to some extent. Itachi’s parents would never agree, and that is just the first hurdle. There is then the Uchiha Council of Elders, then Tsunade-sama to go through. And, of course, his team. They would also be hesitant, though Itachi doesn’t think it’ll be hard to convince Hana and Izumi, which means that only Naruto-sensei would be an issue. And a great issue he would be, what with the fact that he has begun courting the Hyuuga’s second princess. The tension between Kumo and the Hyuuga clan is insurmountably large, and he doesn’t know if Naruto-sensei would agree.

But he has to. Itachi must make him. Itachi must advance to become a chunin as soon as possible or he fears it will ruin everything. 

“We’ll see,” Itachi says finally, and Shisui sighs like he expected nothing different.

“Finally.”

He smiles a small thing, and Shizune-sensei beams at him.

“You did it!” She gently takes the freshly-resuscitated fish between her right hand, putting it back in the bucket, and she places her free hand on Itachi’s shoulder. “That was very impressive, Itachi-kun!” He allows himself to bask in the compliment. “I must say, that was a very quick improvement.”

“I talked to my mother about it,” he informs her. And he had, two days ago, and the discussion had proved very effective.

“Does she have any experience in medical ninjutsu?” Shizune-sensei asks. 

“Not quite.” She had been hesitant to help him, especially since the only time she had come into contact with medical ninjutsu was when she was in the hospital or visiting the Uchiha doctors. But she is a formidable ninjutsu user, with a certain level of mastery in all five elements, fire and lightning more than others, and she had been invaluable in teaching him how to meld them when he explained his issue. It’s all just light emissions, Itachi, she’d told him. You’ve managed to manifest the medical ninjutsu, so it’s just a matter of adjusting it with different ratios of elemental conversions. 

Even Shisui was completely focused on the impromptu lesson after dinner, despite his lack of interest in healing.

He tells Shizune-sensei a basic version of his mother’s help, and she looks very approving, perhaps even a little impressed, and that is the way it should be—his mother is very impressive. “That is an excellent way to teach it,” she tells him. “My, I might have to suggest implementing that in the medic classes for students who have different elemental affinities.”

“She will be pleased to hear that.”

“If Uchiha-sama is willing, perhaps she would like to discuss this further,” Shizune-sensei requests, and Itachi nods, signifying his willingness to pass the message on. “Now,” she grins with only a hint of schadenfreude. “Time to do that over and over again until you drop.”

“Ow!” 

Itachi watches, dispassionate, as Hana tumbles into Izumi. But Naruto-sensei is adequately distracted, so Itachi takes it as his cue, fingers twisting into the handseals for Katon: Gōkakyū no Jutsu. He doesn’t announce the technique, feels the rumble of fire and chakra build under his skin, and when it’s the right size, he launches it from his mouth.

It does exactly as he wishes it to, and he darts in right after it, using the cloud of smoke to his advantage, seeking Naruto-sensei’s behemoth chakra signature, and-

The air leaves his lungs and he thuds down.

“Okay, I’m calling it,” Naruto-sensei says immediately after Itachi is down. “Are you all okay?”

“Yes.” Itachi is first to signal his assent, dismissing the clone hovering in the background with an ambush, and the other two of his team soon echo their own. The Haimaru brothers, once their mistress gives them the signal, peel themselves off the ground and trot over to her, tails wagging in concern as she curses and pulls herself to her feet.

A hawk caws in the sky. Naruto-sensei looks up and sighs, drooping. “Take five while I deal with whatever that is.”

“Amaterasu bless,” Izumi mutters, and it's only because of her shifted proximity to him that he hears it. “Are you alright, Itachi-kun?” She asks, turning to him with her head tilted not unlike Haimaru.

“Hn.” Itachi nods. 

She gives him a faint smile before her face crumples into a frown, taking in the battered training field. “I don't understand how that went completely wrong,” she says, almost to herself.

Itachi does. Perhaps it's the week of observing them before his cast came off, or perhaps it's the week after that, observing them while he trained his muscles back to fighting shape. 

She sighs. “Maybe sensei really is that hard to beat, even if he fought at a chunin level.” 

He isn't. Itachi knows. And perhaps, if Itachi wasn't so weak from the recovery, he could have beaten Naruto-sensei alone. It's much harder doing with a team as well, holding him back, anchoring him with indecision.

“What do you think, Itachi-kun?” She asks.

What does he think? He thinks that Izumi spends too much time making space for him, that Hana takes up that space immediately, forcefully, thinking it’s for herself—or, perhaps, just not wanting to leave it for Itachi—that Itachi cannot work with the amount of space both of them obstruct.

He thinks that he wouldn't be surprised if it ended up failing like his first genin team. At least, he hopes, he’ll be a chunin long before then.

He shakes the thoughts from his head. “Hn.” 

She turns away but not before he catches her pursed lips. “Well, we always have the next round.”

“Damn right, we do,” Hana says, cracking her knuckles. “And we're going to win this time.”

“Unlikely,” Itachi remarks, watching the hawk leave Naruto-sensei’s shoulder, watching the troubled frown on Naruto-sensei's face. He wonders, perhaps, if this is regarding the Chunin Exams.

Distractedly, he hears a yelp, presumably from where Izumi jabs an elbow into Hana's ribs, but by the time he looks at them, Izumi stares at him, guileless, dark eyes framed by gentle eyelashes, and Hana is glaring at both of them.

“Why would you say that, Itachi-kun?” She asks almost sweetly. Hana shoots her a perturbed look, one that Itachi echoes if only in his heart.

“Because sensei is cutting this session short.”

As if on cue, Naruto-sensei is jogging back to them. The hawk is a speck in the distance, but sensei's scowl is easy to spot, even if he tries to cover it up.

“Today's training session is over,” he informs them, like Itachi predicted, and sensei valiantly tries to conjure up a smile. It clashes terribly with the scowl. “I need to talk to Tsunade-sama.”

“What about?” Itachi asks as if he doesn't already know. Itachi suspects it's about his letter, a proposal, signed by a reluctant otou-san, urging the Hokage to consider sending Itachi to Kumo’s Chunin Exams.

Naruto-sensei shakes his head, though. “Nothing to worry about.” 

Hana is looking at him through the corner of her eyes, squinting with suspicion as he nods.

“We'll see you tomorrow, sensei,” Izumi says softly. 

Sensei nods, softening a little. “If the three of you want to train, I won't stop you. Take care.” He disappears on the spot into a cloud of excessive smoke.

Itachi doesn't waste his time gathering his scattered kunai and wire. He wants to spar, just not with them. Perhaps Shisui would be free. It has been a while since they sparred, after all, and the sun is resting high enough in the sky that it signifies his lessons are likely over.

He wonders, again, the benefits of teaching Shisui the Kage Bunshin. The younger boy has already exhausted the reserves of knowledge that the Academy held; much like Itachi himself, he only attended due to the attendance record. Much like Itachi during his last four years, he would benefit from being out of the classroom, specifically through a shadow clone left in his space.

At least Shisui has the pre-genin program, he thinks. Itachi hadn't had anything like that before he graduated, and once he had been caught, he had to attend his lessons again everyday. In person.

It was detestable.

“Guys, do you want to spar anyway?” Izumi asks, a little desperate, and Itachi hears Hana packing up as well.

“No,” he tells her before leaving the training grounds.

“What the douche said.” He hears Hana say as he walks away, and he gives into the urge to roll his eyes.

They're finally in agreement.

The training grounds that Naruto-sensei had chosen are the ones farthest from the Uchiha Compound. The path back home takes him past the Academy, through the village, past the main Konoha Police Station, then the hospital, then home.

Knowing Shisui, and the time, Itachi is likely to meet the younger boy dawdling by the flowers or the dango shop they both liked to frequent. Personally, he hopes it's the dango shop—he deserves a treat for dealing with Team Naruto.

It seems he miscalculated, for when he approaches the Academy, the bell rings, and students flood the space, drifting to the crowd of parents. Itachi slows his gait, walking slower, eyes out for a head of curly hair and the Uchiha mon. He sees a couple of the latter, nodding politely at his various younger cousins and their parents, but none of Shisui.

He entertains the thought that Shisui really did skip school anyway, until a shriek cuts through the noise.

“Itachi!” A body collides with his back, and it's only the nagging feeling that they are being watched, that he is in Konoha, safe, and that no one would appreciate him injuring an Academy student as a genin, that he doesn't immediately flip Shisui onto his face. Instead, he allows him to cling to Itachi.

Several parents shoot him amused glances, and every single one of their family members turn a disapproving look at the…exuberance.

“Get off, Shisui,” Itachi sighs. He stands, rooted to the spot, waiting for the boy to comply. After an extra squeeze, he does.

“I knew you loved me,” he sniffles, and Itachi knows it's fake, but public opinion of the Uchiha hinges on the heir. It always has. He must show sympathy. 

And Shisui—the cretin—knows this.

“Of course, Shisui-kun.” He tries not to sound too long-suffering. “Would you like to get dango?”

“You read my mind, Itachi-kun!” He agrees brightly, all tears magically disappearing. 

Itachi makes eye contact with Makoto, one of their cousins, and they exchange a moment of solidarity.

Most of Shisui’s hysterics are a mask, a frighteningly accurate one, hiding the cunning budding shinobi he is underneath, and then, the smart boy he is under that. Itachi appreciates it, usually, until it turns on him when Shisui gets bored.

Maybe he should teach him the Kage Bunshin. Then, Itachi wouldn't have to deal with this.

They walk to the dango shop. It's more of a café, really, and Shisui prattles on about his day the entire way there, Itachi hemming and hawing at the appropriate places. He talks of spars, the geography lessons, his new acquaintances, his old friends, gossip—for only being in the Academy, he has picked up a surprising amount of gossip.

When they reach the café, Itachi allows Shisui to scamper forward, leaning over the edge of the counter with a guileless smile. It’s eerily like Izumi’s, and Itachi squints a little at that, but Shisui is placing his order.

“One anko and one mitarashi dango, please!” His grin sparkles. Cloud-soft curls, long, sweet eyelashes framing big eyes—the woman at the counter melts immediately. Itachi can tell she's new; no one else fell for Shisui's charms at this café anymore, not after he had swindled numerous skewers of dango out of them in his free time, but if there's one thing Itachi loves more than dango, it's cheaper dango, so he lets him do it.

“Aww, of course,” she cooes. “Is this your older brother?” She's referring to Itachi, of course, and he goes to correct her while only departing a little energy to soothe the sting of the query, but Shisui grabs him by his arm, clinging and turning his eyes to him.

“He's my cousin, but he's my aniki.” Itachi tries not to jolt at that. He used to call Sasuke-onii-san that, before- “He's been working very hard and he got his first paycheck today and he said he was going to buy me dango!”

Oh, Amaterasu, Shisui…

“It’s true,” he affects a little too flatly. She is too caught up in Shisui's big eyes, however, and doesn't notice. 

“Well, since it's such a big occasion, I think your aniki can hold onto his paycheck a little longer.” She winks at Itachi, and he forces a smile.

He's going to leave her a tip that makes up for all of…Shisui. No free dango, then.

“And what would you like?” She turns to him.

He used to enjoy hanami dango, and the reminder about his brother moments ago is what causes him to waver, but… “Kurogoma, please. Three skewers.” And, he hesitates. “To go.” 

The cashier brings out the delicacies they asked for, shooing away his hand when he tried to pay, and packages them neatly. He drops the money in the tip jar instead, when she isn't watching. Shisui thanks her almost excessively, and Itachi drops a couple of his own gratitudes, and they peel out of there, the younger boy giggling. 

“Oh, I love free dango!” He cheers.

“All dango is free for you,” Itachi points out.

The grin he gets back is sneaky. “Exactly.”

He shakes his head slightly. 

They walk through Konoha, the civilians arcing down a foot’s space around them, creating a bubble. This is how he knows all is…stable between the Uchiha and the village: when the wide berth they gave them is disrupted in any shape, there is trouble within Konoha. The last time had been after his brother’s death. Everything somehow always led back to that.

“I thought you still had training,” Shisui states, pulling a stick out of the box. He hands the bag over to Itachi right after.

“The Hokage required Naruto-sensei’s expertise.” Itachi’s eyes flicker to the Tower. It could be about the chunin exams, or it could just as easily be about a mission. Sensei is still an A-ranked jounin, after all. “Would you like to improve your target practice, Shisui?”

He looks up, cheeks stuffed with dango, and it’s strangely…cute. Itachi bites the inside of his cheek as to not smile. Shisui swallows, thankfully, before answering. “Sure thing. Am I throwing them at you? I have to warn you; I’m getting pretty fast with them.”

Itachi nods. “Shuriken, if you wish as well.” It would be better as a spar, but as of now, Itachi wants to focus on dodging.

Shisui understands his intentions anyway. “One-sided spar. The training ground by my home should be empty—last I checked, no one booked it out.” It is, also, a bit farther away from everything else, and not the most well-kept grounds. “Maybe, after that, we could transition to a real spar.” He’s shot a wickedly mischevious look. “I’ve been dying to test some things out.”

Itachi arches an eyebrow, lets his own thrill show for a second. “I look forward to it.”

That night, Itachi eats dinner with his mother, alone.

He sleeps peacefully, tired from keeping up with Shisui.

He only wakes when the front door slams shut, before dawn, his father’s presence retreating from the house. He waits, half-asleep, for him to come back, but he doesn’t that night, and Itachi is exhausted enough from sparring, from Sharingan, from training, that he slumbers again.

The next day, the Village is taut with quiet tension.

Chapter Text

Naruto-sensei cancels training for that day and the next. The message comes in the form of Shisui, strangely enough. 

“Something weird is happening,” the younger boy tells him. “Security’s up, and we were supposed to be in T&I for this round of rotations in the pre-genin program, but they canceled it.”

“Not postponed?”

“Canceled.” Shisui’s confirmation is a grim thing. 

Itachi hasn’t seen or heard his father, either, since he rushed out early in the morning. It’s not unusual for Itachi to not see him, unless either of them tries very hard, but the air—the timing —of it all…

The incident likely has something to do with the Uchiha Military Police Force as well. Or the Uchiha clan. Those are the only two reasons why his father would be involved.

So, when his mother asks him to deliver his father’s lunch to him, he accepts. 

“Will he be at the police station, okaa-san?”

“If he isn’t there, then it’ll be the Hokage Tower.” Even his mother doesn’t remain unruffled. It has been less than twenty-four hours, but her eyes are sharper than normal and Itachi can count more weapons on her, visible weapons, than earlier. 

Whatever it is, it’s serious. More serious than he suspected.

The guards at the gate of the compound are alert, letting him out without a word, but their eyes are urging him to be cautious. Konoha is jarringly the same, connected to yesterday’s general level of stability, and it isn’t at the stage where the civilians and merchants have picked up on it yet. 

It’s only the shinobi that are wary. 

Security has picked up, like Shisui said, and there are Uchiha officers posted at every corner, most in uniform but Itachi recognizes some undercover, manning various stalls under genjutsus. 

It’s likely not an attack, he rationalizes. The civilians would be caught up in more of a panic, then. It could be a prisoner breakout, but…the guards, the shinobi flitting around on the rooftops, the flashes of ANBU masks he sees, they all suggest that it’s not anything specific. They are wary, not on watch.

He keeps to his track, walking through the streets. The police station isn’t far from their compound, so he arrives under ten minutes. Inside is not any better than the compound. Most officers are on the street, and the ones in the station are the rookies, taking statements and charging low-level criminals. Itachi slips through the quiet bustle easily, bee-lining to the back of the station.

The receptionist, a civilian-born shinobi, is sitting at the desk and filling out forms. He checks Itachi’s genin I.D. with a quick, practiced glance and waves him through the door to the stairs. He goes up, doesn’t cast an eye towards the steps that lead to the cell block located below the police station.

The hallway to the office is dead silent, dark. Instinctually, Itachi muffles his footsteps to match the quiet. It’s a good instinct: when he nears his father’s cracked office door, the only source of light in the darkened hallway, he hears voices. 

He doesn’t go too close to the door.

“-nuzuka ninken have been over the path twenty times already, but they still haven’t found a clue.” Itachi doesn’t recognize the voice. It’s young, though. “It got too contaminated by the time the morning crew arrived, and since it was T&I…”

The perpetrator was likely to be a shinobi, then, Itachi fills in. There’s only a specific set of crimes that required the Inuzuka, however—a theft.

His father confirms it. “Did they manage to identify what else was stolen?”

“Nope.” The ‘p’ is popped. Young and disrespectful. Or comfortable around his father. It doesn’t sound like an Uchiha, nor does it contain the distinctive Nara drawl. It could be an Inuzuka, but Itachi should sense a third presence in the office, but it’s only two. “Just what we already found.” 

He debates whether the voice is female or male, but it’s hard to tell from where he’s standing. He inches forward, just a bit. 

“There’s only one person who would steal the katana that she used to murder my son.” His father’s voice is grim, scorching rage contained into one word, and Itachi jolts. The katana.

It gives him away instantly. 

He scrambles back a few steps, closer to the stairs, as quickly as he can before the door opens farther and a figure steps out.

It’s Yamanaka Ino. She stares at him for a moment, and he blinks back, bringing his breathing under control. She turns her head towards the office, speaking into it. “It’s your son.” Then, she looks back at him, flicking her eyes up and down as if assessing him.

Itachi does not speak until another figure joins her, haloed in light from behind.

“Itachi,” his father says, the barest hint of surprise in his voice.

“Otou-san,” Itachi greets, walking forward. He makes sure that the bento box between his hands is in full view, that his heartbeat is calm, and that he did not eavesdrop and discover that someone stole the katana that his brother was killed with.

He tries to hide the startling realization that there is only one person with the motive to steal the katana that his brother was killed with.

“Okaa-san wanted to ensure that you ate lunch.” It comes out too flat, too robotic, but Itachi has not talked to his father often enough in these past months that it’s anything worth commenting on. 

He holds out the bento box to his father who accepts it with an imperceptible sigh. “Thank you. And tell your mother that she has my gratitudes as well.”

“Hn.” 

Yamanaka Ino is still watching, judging, and Itachi meets her eyes evenly once more before looking up at his father again.

“Inform her to not expect me for dinner. This might take longer than I believed.”

“Yes, otou-san.”

His father dismisses him, drifting back into the office, door shut completely and the Yamanaka on his heels, and Itachi leaves without lingering. He won’t hear anything now.

Besides, he already knows.

There is only one woman with the motive to do this, he thinks, breathing out very deliberately as he goes down the stairs. There is only one woman with the motive and the means to break into the depths of T&I, to the very bottom of the underground facility, to steal a murder weapon from the evidence archives.

He breathes in the fresh air of Konoha streets, unable to recall how he got there, but he knows this: his brother’s murder weapon is now in Haruno Sakura’s hands.

Itachi is not violent. He does not enjoy it. It is an act he executes only when he has to. The first time he killed a man was the first time he activated his Sharingan, watched his teammate Tenma die before him before he killed the bandits who killed his teammate. 

Violence is always something marked by grief, to him. It is grief that guides his kunai into targets. It’s grief that shapes his shadow clone and grief that he overlays Haruno Sakura’s face over his own, green eyes mockingly taunting as she leads him through a dance, and he kills his own clone, twisting his blade where her heart would rest before the memories flood back to him.

He throws up immediately.

And then, he lays there, by the rank stink of his own vomit puddle, and stares up into the sky.

Haruno Sakura. 

The sky is blue. Enchanting. The entire day is picturesque, but the color seeps away like a wound.

Haruno Sakura.

She’d broken in, and she had stolen the sword.

The world blurs in his eyes, and he blinks rapidly. Fingers curl into the grass.

She had stolen the sword she used to kill his brother.

They tighten, something gives under his hands, but he cannot think. He had trained so he could think, but now, after training, after all of this, he still cannot think.

He should have been awake. He should have done something. Done what? She had proven herself to be much stronger, much faster than him, but if he was there, perhaps he could have alerted Naruto-sensei, or the Hokage, or Hatake Kakashi, or his mother, or anyone who could have stopped her, and he could stop feeling like this. Or, perhaps, she would have killed him and the weight of this burden mangling his mind, muddling his priorities, would have lifted, and he would see his brother again—regardless of whether he would have been forgiven for not avenging him. Avenging Sasuke.

He needs to avenge Sasuke. 

A shuddering breath out, almost like a sob.

He needs to avenge aniki.

He doesn’t quite recall how he gets home. It’s late when he does, he knows that. His mother accepts his excuse that he is feeling ill, allows him to go to bed without dinner, and Itachi does not sleep that night.

He cannot do anything. 

When he does fall asleep, it’s restless. It’s violent, and it is him, it is her; it is green eyes that stare him down, circling him, flashes of a silver blade that he knows is what was used to kill his brother—and she smiles, teeth, like rows of knives, and from behind the rotting, yellowing teeth, maggots crawl—and he wakes before it can kill him.

The sheets are damp with his sweat, and he throws them back, allowing the cool air to chill his shivering body until he’s no longer shaking from the weight of his…his nightmare. Where she lives.

The sky has just begun to lighten, and the feeling—the strange blankness—from yesterday has ebbed with the night, it seems. Clarity is on the horizon, and he breathes in deeply. 

Yesterday, he could not think. Today, he can. He needs to talk to Naruto-sensei, for only Naruto-sensei can allow or reject their team from going to Kumo for the Chunin Exams.

The only option is to go upward, and Itachi must have access to greater material, to more rigorous missions, more harsher training partners, to be able to avenge his aniki, and to do that Itachi must become a chunin, then a tokubetsu, then a jounin, then an ANBU.

He needs to get better.

To do that, he must talk to Naruto-sensei and convince him somehow.

Itachi plays at normalcy. He eats his breakfast. His mother, aware, notices this act and she does not comment on it. She never does. But Itachi eats, and he packs his lunch, and he heads out after informing her he will be training for the day. 

Naruto-sensei is a beacon, a big, blinding light that anyone could pick out of a crowd, and the very faintest of it blankets over Konoha Proper. Itachi follows it, straight to the Hokage Tower, swallowing back the terror of the nightmare. He is going somewhere safe, after all. 

The receptionist makes him sign in, but as he finishes the last stroke, Naruto-sensei’s presence nears. Fast.

Itachi straightens, placing the pen back down to the desk just as his teacher appears through the door. “Ohaiyo-” 

Naruto-sensei storms right past him.

Oh. Well. Itachi fumbles with the notepad, handing it to the receptionist as quickly as possible, before he rushes out. He notes, faintly, that there is an undercurrent of frustration, a steady crackle to his teacher as the blond marches through the streets where the people give him a wide berth, and when he takes to the rooftops, the shinobi give him a wide berth there too.

“Sensei!” Itachi’s ignored again. He narrows his eyes, running after him, determined.

Itachi just barely manages to keep up. Shunshin, run, jump, duck into an alley, duck out, through a broken window, out the front door, dodge the slam of it directly in his face—recognize the decoy meant to throw him off—shunshin, shunshin, down, up, up, down, up, up, up-

He loses Naruto-sensei altogether, and he stands alone, on a rooftop. 

Damn it.

Itachi reaches out, and all he feels in that blanket, lost, is this burning sense of anger. He’s felt the Kyuubi’s aura—a wide, vicious thing—before, a sharp burst of red-hot vengeance seared into his memories when he stood at his brother’s funeral with Naruto-sensei lurking in the back, pacing. 

Not this time, though; whatever anger Itachi tastes on his tongue is entirely Naruto-sensei’s. It’s tangible, overwhelming, and it almost makes him pause—perhaps, now is not a good time to discuss a sensitive topic with his sensei. 

But he knows why he’s here. And he knows there’s no point in letting a wound fester without attention. The concept of space is a myth; the only way to get results is to be doggedly persistent, permanently aware, consistent, and Itachi needs results.

Tracking Naruto-sensei’s trail leads him to the carnage of the Third Training Ground.

Itachi has only passed this location—it has been years since he’d entered, and even now, the destruction of Team Kakashi overlays Naruto-sensei’s wild decimation of the space. He sees too much of it, too personal, too cloying, so he turns his eyes to the only constant variable: Uzumaki Naruto.

The blonde is standing in front of the Memorial Stone, fists clenched, shoulders tense, and Itachi makes himself move before he changes his mind.

“Not now, Itachi.” 

The snap from the stalwart man makes him pause, letting his eyes flit from the heaving back to a nick on the Memorial Stone, the only flaw on the side of the structure. He doesn’t recall the story with as sharp of a clarity as he would like, but he remembers it. Haruno was the one to put it there. A mishap with a sword she was just learning to use on a monument meant to honor those who had fallen. 

A fault on the stone where his brother’s name was etched. 

It is poetic irony at its finest.

Still, this is enough to strengthen his resolve. “Sensei.”

“I said, not now.” He sounds tired, and the anger has dissipated to a wisp. It lingers all around them, but the source of it is…raw. Uncomfortably raw.

“Sensei.” Itachi repeats. His voice is thick with something. He doesn’t know what else to say. 

“How could you? Well- never mind; why would you do that?” Sensei’s head tips forward, banging against the Memorial Stone once, then again. “Kumo is not a safe place for you or any of your teammates, and it definitely isn’t for me, and it definitely isn’t for you.”

Oh. The note. Itachi had forgotten about the note he sent to the Hokage’s office.

“That isn’t even the point!” Naruto-sensei peels himself off the stone, turning around. He paces back and forth in front of the monument, avoiding Itachi’s eyes. “Why wouldn’t you tell me? We could have figured it out together, but instead, all you keep doing is showing me that you can’t be trusted, that you will go around my back for everything- I mean, what the point of two months of psychological manipulations to make me your sensei if you won’t even rely on me?” He whirls around to face Itachi.

The Uchiha is at a loss for words. “I-” but his voice falters when he realizes that Naruto-sensei is looking for a real answer. A genuine answer. And Itachi can’t—doesn’t really know how to, either—give that to him. 

“And then, this whole Sakura business—damn it.” He runs a hand through his already-messy hair, and Itachi feels a flicker of what he thinks is guilt just as he processes the words that Sensei said. 

He must have found out, he thinks, and then immediately, this is horrible timing. He doesn’t know how to salvage this situation, how to leverage it without ruining everything—Naruto-sensei is sensitively loyal, and if Itachi says the wrong thing, it’s…it’s a setback. He can work with it.

He just doesn’t know if that’s a good thing.

Itachi grapples for something to say. Something honest, but not quite the truth. “I need this,” is what he lands on. “I need this.”

Naruto-sensei looks for a moment like he’s about to explode before he contains himself. “I just wish you’d tell me that.” His voice is tight. “You need to trust this team, Itachi—you need to trust me. You have to. Especially when everything is falling apart; you need to give me something to work with, or this whole team is going to fall apart like mine did. Like yours did.” Naruto-sensei’s lips are a harsh slash on his face.

It’s a very, very low blow, to use the failure of Itachi’s first team against him. A flinch arises in him, reflexive, but he shoves it down in favor of a response.

Then, it hits him. What to say.

It still feels like pulling teeth.

“I’m sorry.” He doesn’t specify what he’s sorry for and glues his jaw shut because if he apologizes for one thing specifically, he’s afraid he might tell the truth. 

Itachi can see when the words register with Naruto-sensei because he deflates just a little. The man laughs bitterly after a second. “Kami, you are so much like your brother.” He shakes his head, and almost to himself, he mutters, “And I’m so much like Sakura-chan.”

The half-tinged regretful fondness causes Itachi’s teeth to grind together, the image of acid-green and rotting bodies appearing in his mind, but the rest of him is admirably still. He stands, hands by his sides, awaiting judgment. 

“Fine,” Naruto-sensei says finally. “Fine. You guys can do Kumo.” He turns around before he thinks Itachi can catch the crinkle of unhappiness. “I’ll handle it.”

Itachi squashes the guilty relief. “Really?”

“I mean, yeah, this is what I’m for, isn’t it?” Naruto-sensei raises his hand to the Stone, his thumb brushing the blemish in the kunai-like structure. He mumbles something under his breath, before his voice picks up. “It’s fine, it’s fine, I’ll figure it out.”

There’s this big rush of air that leaves Itachi, almost a gasp, not quite a sigh. “Thank you, sensei.” Shoulders sag. The panic—the remnants of last night, of desperation of yesterday—eases just a little, and it is more than Itachi has felt in weeks, so he falls into its welcome thoughtlessly.

He could still do it. It wasn't ruined yet.

“But, Itachi?” He turns his head to meet the boy’s eyes. There’s a glint of steel in them, of anger, of betrayal. “Never do this again.” 

And Itachi nods and tries not to shiver in the warm Konoha breeze.

A bird comes later that evening with the note that Team Naruto’s practice would begin again the next day, and that Sensei had some news for them. It is signed with Sensei’s name and a smiley-face. Itachi’s stomach clenches a little at the thought of tomorrow, anyway.

It’s an act for Hana’s and Izumi’s sake, but Naruto-sensei is still upset with Itachi. Itachi, to his credit, does acknowledge that his actions were a violation of trust, and he did apologize. He doesn't think it was enough. And beyond that, Sensei’s words still echo in his mind.

Why did Itachi force Naruto-sensei into becoming their teacher?

Objectively, he knows. Naruto-sensei is a goldmine of information on both of his former teammates.

Psychologically, he’d be able to shed light on Haruno’s behavior, on things that Sasuke did or didn’t do in a fight against her.

Practically, Sensei would be a means to get some of the opportunities that Haruno had, so Itachi could place himself on the same level as her.

Physically, even sparring with Naruto-sensei would shed light on the fighting style that they built together. 

But Itachi does not share this desire to know his brother’s killer with Naruto-sensei. He had built their relationship on half-fabricated truths of wanting to honor his brother's memory in battle or something along those lines, but those words didn't align with his motivations. And he holds his cards flush against his chest, and he refuses to let Naruto-sensei see his plans, his machinations for the future. 

He knows why he does this: no one in their right mind would let Itachi go through with ending his life over revenge. 

But that isn’t the point. Itachi had thought, before, that his half-truths would be enough to satisfy Naruto-sensei. Clearly, that isn’t the case; something about those uncannily blue eyes tended to pry a lot more than Itachi had estimated. 

Now, Itachi needs to plan for how much he can reveal without giving anything away. He needs to investigate Haruno without Naruto-sensei knowing that he’s investigating her, and now that the man knows that Haruno is active again, he predicts it will be harder. He needs to be careful about what information he reveals about Haruno or he’ll arouse Sensei’s suspicions-

Hana. Hana knew he lied on the night of their first C-Rank. Kami-damned, he has to get a handle on that too—she’d be more than happy to blab her mouth on Itachi, and Itachi cannot afford setbacks. He cannot afford to lose any more time.

He must kill Haruno as soon as possible.

A chill creeps down his back at that. It’s a newer feeling; he never felt it when the monster who killed his brother was only a figment of the past. The three years Haruno disappeared were fraught with tension, grief, rage, so much more, but at least, he wasn’t…unsettled. He was just angry. But now, he knows what it is like to face her, her flashing silver blade, figure cloaked, her eyes so full of life when all she brings is death. 

Fear.

He takes one deep breath, holding it until the feeling dissipates under his will.

He has much more important things to focus on, now. 

First, the Chunin Exams. Somehow, his team must overcome the first two rounds before the individual fighting round. In the three months building up to the Exam, Itachi must familiarize Hana and Izumi to his fighting style, and vice versa. They must not stumble over each other like they do in practice now. They need to get better as a unit. Hana’s acerbity will be a hurdle, as will the secret she holds over his head like a sword, but she has yet to do anything with the latter, and he is much too used to the former. He can figure this out.

It’s also a necessity to understand Kumo, their demographics, their strongest fighters, the terrain, the culture, as well as study the other opponents from foreign nations. 

Itachi has a lot to prepare for in the coming months.