Uchiha Itachi
Despite what people said, Itachi was not a brocon. He despised that word. Brocon. As if he was some kind of a pervert. He was not. Itachi was simply a family oriented guy. No one could blame him for that, in his opinion. His family was a great one. His father was stern yet still able to take advice. His mother was gentle and kind-hearted, but had the nerves of steel and very firm in her beliefs. Sasuke was kind, smart, thoughtful, attentive, cute, adorable, loveable-
Point was, Itachi couldn’t be blamed for loving his family. At all.
That aside, Itachi was also a shinobi who really loved his village. Dearly. Despite the fact that it was kind of rotten. Orphans uncared for, rumors flew around everywhere like it was going out of fashion, people being blamed for showing kindness - this was what baffled Itachi the most. Shinobi were humans, despite being killing machines for a living, so it did not make sense for a ninja to never make a move based off compassion - all sorts of things, really.
Because Itachi could also see the goodness in Konoha. It was a village that was established in the hope that no children would fight and die a child anymore. Regardless of that dream still being unachieveable to this day, it was the intention that mattered. He could see the kindness in the people who invited some unfortunate children to their house for a grub, fending off other villagers who got their petty minds too addled in their grief that they would attack a child, leaving some food on the said child’s door, among other things.
The thing was, people were neither good or bad most of the time. Most people might get swept off some petty rhetoric, reacted stupidly, and then just let it go once their heads cleared. It was the choices they made that mattered. Itachi was not foolish enough to say that most people were good. Environment shaped a person, and he knew very well that a very kind person could turn into a raging killing machine in the instant someone stepped on their bottom line.
As he watched over Sasuke playing with other kids from the clan, Itachi felt a soft breeze blowing behind him. Sighing, he closed his eyes and said, “How did it go?”
“I didn’t go to him. I went to another higher power.”
“Which higher power? The council? Daimyo? God?”
“...”
“...Don’t tell me it’s God.”
“No.”
Well, that’s a rather clipped answer.
Itachi heard the man behind him sighed before taking a seat right next to him. Shisui casted a look to their surroundings before saying, “I talked to someone, and they gave me some advices.”
“Shisui, you know you’re not suppos-”
“I know. But what can I do about it? No one will listen to us!”
“And this person did? Miraculously someone just happened to bumped into you and they turned out to be a great listener? Do you realize now how ridiculous that sounds?”
“He’s not just someone, and no, I didn’t just bumped into him.”
“Really?”
“I got a way around this, but we need to involve more people.”
“I don’t want to involve children. That leave just us both, Obito-san, and Ugeki-san. I also don’t think we can trust anyone else. Before that though, I want to hear your plan.”
“Is there a chance to get anyone outside of the clan as well?”
Itachi paused for a bit and scrutinized Shisui’s face. The latter was obviously a very experienced ninja and had served longer than Itachi did, so he couldn’t grab a single clue from Shisui’s expression. Itachi so badly wanted to sigh. What he wouldn’t give for some peace and quiet, away from murderous higher-ups obsessed with eyeballs.
“All right. Kakashi-san is in, and Anko-san also called dibs, if I remember correctly. That person apparently had some dealings with Orochimaru, which is why his experiment went unnoticed for so long. Gai-san will definitely wants in as well, and we can trust him fully. I can’t think of anyone else right now.”
“How about Tsunade-hime?”
“She’s not in the village right now, and unless you want to do this in a totally flashy way, I recommend not to involve her.”
“She left already?”
“Yeah, and she took Nohara-san with her too.”
“Ah, no wonder Obito look so downcast lately.”
Itachi watched as Sasuke waved goodbye to the other kids and trotted towards him. He smiled and said, “Well, let’s meet over at Ichiraku. 9 sounds good?”
“Yeah. I’ll bring Obito.”
Their meeting at Ichiraku went unimpeded by emergency or anything of the sorts. The discussion flowed so smoothly, Itachi did not even realize how much the old man Teuchi had been butting into the conversation. That was fine. Itachi knew the old man enough to know that he was a rare absolutely good person in Konoha.
Which brought Itachi to confess a certain thing.
“I caught an interesting fish. The shark-vicious-enough-to-be-in-the-bingo-book kind of a fish.”
“That’s interesting. How did you catch such a fish in our geography?”
“Well, I had to go for an escort mission last month, remember? On our way back, I stopped by to fish. This fish is very interesting. Other fish turned up dead and this fish got left behind to be eaten.”
“Really? That is rather unusual. Do you want to show that fish to old man Hokage up there?”
“Depends.”
“On what?”
“How fast can you deal with our eye problem?”
“Give me about a week.”
“I’ll show the fish to old man Hokage after that, then.”
“You sure that shark won’t run?” Obito suddenly interjected.
Itachi took some time to think. Kisame was certainly quite temperamental, but he was a man of his words. Quite to a fault, really.
“I’m pretty sure, but I guess it won’t hurt to double check.”
“We also need to provide a good reason to not give the old man or the council a good reason to skin the shark.”
“Maybe some intel on the shark’s village?” Shisui suggested.
“Ahem! Shark’s ocean of origin, please. No sharks have villages,” old man Teuchi butted in. He seemed to be having so much fun with this, Itachi observed.
“No can do,” Obito said while slurping on his shio ramen. Ugh. Manners, young man. “From what I know about this particular shark, this shark is rather loyal, and not some punk who’d spill.”
Nice, Obito. You actually paid attention for once.
“Well, we can always string him along with our Operation Mochi.”
“Really, Shisui? That’s what we’re calling it now? Operation Mochi?”
“You give me a better cause of death and I’ll change the name into that.”
Apparently, Teuchi was a very smart man because he raised both of his hands and exclaimed, “Well, good thing I know nothing about cause of death by choking. Slurping can very well lead to death, but it’s near New Year now. Choking on mochi is sadly a common thing during this period.”
“Nice, old man. In any case, we can bring him into this op.”
Itachi paused in his slurping to think for a bit. That wasn’t a bad idea. If they succeeded, it would give them more ground to work on with having Kisame being recognized as a Konoha ninja rather than a rogue nin.
“Okay. Let’s do that. I’ll talk to him.”
The talk with Kisame went well. Well, it was a bit tense for a while, especially since Itachi suggested the man to snitch on his former village. However, it went well after Itachi gave an alternative for that. Apparently, killing fellow villagers was a big no-no with the shark man? Merman? Manmaid? Whatever. The point was, Kisame was now in.
Itachi left the man with Shisui to work on the details while he brought Sasuke to the playground to play. He usually did this, but rarely in the noon. However, there was a reason for this and it was the young academy teacher he heard Shishui gushing about for a long while last night. He wanted to have a chance encounter with the man. Itachi have heard about him or rather, he heard the teacher shouting a lot. It was usually two names; Naruto and Shikamaru.
Shikamaru might be too much of a mouthful to shout out loud, so Itachi heard “Narutoooooo!” more often than the former. He really did not know what to make of someone whose favorite past time was to shout his student’s name. Shisui said he was a kind and soft man. Itachi honestly could not say that that was the impression he got. Then again, Naruto was a prankster. A stinky one, at that.
Sasuke was strangely fond of that kid, though. And who was Itachi to deny Sasuke of anything?
“Did you take a bath, Naruto?” Itachi asked, noticing the lack of certain aroma on the boy.
“Yeah! Iruka-sensei dragged me to the bath house this morning and scrubbed me! Scrubbed me! Ya’d think he got a common sense not to scrub someone, but nooooo. We don’t even have school today! I don’t know how he found me!”
God, that was too many exclamation point in one sentence.
“You look nice now, Naruto. Oh, not that you didn’t look nice before! But you’re nicer now!” Sasuke, ever the sweetheart, chimed in.
Itachi often wondered what great deeds his parents and he did in their previous life to be granted with such a sweetheart to be born into their family. He might have saved the whole world, which was a fair deed to be rewarded with such an adorable kid as a younger brother.
“You bought new clothes?”
“Nah, Iruka-sensei did! He took all my clothes! He said something about being clean and all that shizz!”
“I see. So after that, he let you come here?”
The reason Itachi asked that was simple. No one with common sense would send a kid to a playground after they cleaned the kid up. Everyone knew that if a kid went to the playground, they were gonna get mud and guano all over themselves. Not to mention the fact that Naruto was all decked up in a new set of clothes and by the look of it, new shoes, too.
“Nope!” Naruto replied, looking too proud of himself. “He asked me to take out the trash and I did! I came here after I did that!”
Itachi sighed inwardly. There was a good chance that Naruto was going to be scrubbed once again this evening, and that Itachi would be hearing “Narutoooo!” anytime now.
“Narutoooooo!”
Called it.
Itachi was currently at Iruka’s place, and he did not know how he got here. It must have been Sasuke, he decided. Naruto must have asked Sasuke if he wanted to join in and Sasuke, being the sweet boy he was, must have agreed. Itachi had no say in this matter.
“What are we having today, Iruka-sensei?!”
“Don’t jump around in the kitchen, Naruto! It’s dangerous! We’re having curry today.”
Itachi watched as Naruto jumped up and down while still holding onto Sasuke’s hand, who looked delighted by it. The boy immediately stopped jumping and started to fidget with an uncomfortable expression once Iruka said that.
Which Iruka wasn’t a fan of, apparently, because he immediately said in a gentler tone, “No jumping in the kitchen because it’s dangerous, Naruto. If your arms hit the handle of the pan, the pan might flip over and the hot oil will hit you or the people near you. I don’t want you or anyone to get hurt, you know?”
Itachi supposed the boy wasn’t used to people treating him gently, judging by the startled and the glassy look in his eyes. He heard Naruto mumbled, “Got it,” before taking Sasuke to the living room.
The boy went passed Iruka on his way to the living room, and the latter ruffled his hair affectionately with a gentle look in his eyes. Itachi wondered if Iruka wanted a child of his own because really, that look was too soft. Then again, Iruka was only 20. He couldn’t be wanting a child this young, right?
He should be right.
The only logical conclusion left was Iruka considered the boy as a son. Brother? Wait, maybe son? After all, Iruka was educating the boy like a father would. No, a mother would? In Itachi’s experience, everything from etiquette down to mannerism were all taught by his mother since his father was rarely home. Except for a few jutsus here and there, everything else was taught by his mother.
So, Iruka wanted to be a housewife? Househusband?
Itachi’s train of thoughts came to abrupt halt when Iruka, as if knowing what he was thinking, said, “I want a child, but not now. Not to mention, with me being gay, there’s zero chance of me getting my own child. Also, I don’t think I want to get married.”
Well, when you put it that way…
“I…”
“I know you don’t mean anything bad. Our mind do love getting off-track sometimes, yes? Since the kids are in the living room, do you mind helping me with the cooking?”
“I don’t. What do you need me to do?”
As Itachi cut the ingredients accordingly by Iruka’s instructions, he thought about what he had seen so far.
First off, Iruka was quite the well-off man, though it was not too obvious. He had a house complete with a backgarden and a front yard. There was a pond in the backgarden. He lived alone, but his house looked very well occupied. There were a lot of knick-knacks thrown haphazardly all over the places. The house was clean, but not too clean. It looked lived in.
Itachi concluded that Iruka must had a lot of people, mostly kids, in his house all the time. Either offering them a place to just hang out in, or a safe haven, like he most certainly did for Naruto.
Naruto.
Now that, was something Itachi did not expect. By the look of it, the boy was still living in his apartment. However, Itachi also noticed a lot of things in orange around the house and the boy also seemed very comfortable and familiar with the place, as if he was there all the time and it was his house.
“Why don’t you just adopt him?”
Iruka took the onions he had diced and throw them into the pot. While sauteing the onions, he said, “I want to, but there are a lot of things to take into consideration. The council is one of them, his parents’ friends is another.”
“The council will be of no problem soon,” Itachi stated. He knew what Danzo wanted, and that man would never let Naruto to fall under anyone’s care. Not if that meant the boy would be taken care of both physically and mentally, thus making him more difficult to be influenced. Naruto’s parents’ friends, on the other hand…
“I know, but there are still at least two pests to think about-”
Ah, Mitokado and Utatane.
“- and the friends of his parents. Frankly, I don’t give a shit about what they think since they’ve let the boy live all by himself for so long already, so they can shove their opinions where the sun doesn’t shine. However…”
Iruka took over the carrots and potatoes that Itachi have cut, and throw them into the pot, stirring them again.
“Those people are mostly jounin. One of them is the leader of a clan that only consists of one member, even. They can make my life a living hell, and they might even stretch their paws to the child. I don’t want him to be disturbed. Let him just live his life.”
Now that the carrots and potatoes started browning, Iruka put in the chicken and let it be for a bit before stirring the pot again. He took a pitcher and fill it with water while mumbling, “Apparently, that’s also too much to ask for. They’re not gonna take care of the child, yet they have the gall to say that the child should learn how to be a great shinobi like his parents? Those people should burn, for all I care!”
Well, there were some truths in those people’s words. Naruto was a jinchuuriki. Though Itachi also thought that he shouldn’t make protecting the village as his priority, he should at least know how to defend himself in case some crackhheads got the idea of kidnapping him or worse.
Still, Itachi made no mention of that to Iruka. He was sure the man also knew this.
“So, no. I will only adopt him once I’ve made sure that he will not be harmed in any way in the process,” Iruka concluded.
“You cleaned his apartment and bathed him. And by the looks of it, he’s at your house a lot. I just thought it will be easier for him to adjust if you just go straight ahead and adopt him.”
“I know, but that will be later. Now, all I want is some peace and quiet. Take care of the roots of a big problem first. Nothing can be done if you don’t.”
So he did know about that. That was rather surprising, considering that Iruka was only a chuunin. He must had a wide range of connections.
“We’re taking care of it. Your roots problem will be solved within the week.”
“Excellent!” The man exclaimed while closing the lid.
“Let that simmer for a bit, and I’ll skim it later and add the roux.”
Lunch was very filling. Itachi gained a lot. They talked while they ate, with topics ranging from the Academy’s syllabus to the price of grocery. Naruto ate like a starving beast, which an apt description, Itachi supposed. The curry and rice were all over the plate, covering the whole thing, even his mouth was not spared. Yet, Iruka did not say a word about it. He only told the boy to eat slowly, and try not to spill outside the plate.
It did not work, but Iruka looked pleased. Itachi guessed the amount of spillage must have decreased, then, compared to the past. Iruka went to the kitchen after the meal, putting the kettle on the stove while asking Naruto to gather the plates, which the boy did. The boy came back to the dining table not long after he went to the kitchen with the plates. There were a rag and a spray bottle in the boy’s hands this time around.
“Sasuke! I learned how to clean the table! Iruka-sensei taught me! Watch this!”
Sasuke looked intrigued while Itachi just continued to observe as Naruto took a few tissue papers on the table to gather up rice and whatever else on the table that should not be there with them. After throwing the tissue paper into the bin, the boy then sprayed the table with what Itachi guessed a mixture of water and some sort of cleaner. Itachi did not know much about this kind of thing. Naruto then spread the rag and started to wipe the table with it.
It took only a few minutes, maybe not even that long, but the table was left sparkly clean after Naruto was done with it. “Wait! It’s not done yet!” the boy shouted before running towards the kitchen with the spray bottle and the rag. He returned quickly but with a clean rag this time.
“Iruka-sensei said that you have to do the cleaning three times! First dry, then wet, then dry! But the last dry one needs to be done with a clean cloth like this one!”
Sasuke looked as if he had received enlightenment of some sorts. His eyes brightened as he said, “I will try that once I got home! My mom will be happy, I think!”
Goodness. That was too much adorableness in one package.
“Yeah! Iruka-sensei always looked happy whenever I did this! He said that the table is where we eat, so like the kitchen and pretty much everywhere else, it must be clean!”
It was as the boy said, the table was looking significantly better than just moments before. Itachi might try that out later as well. When he got a house of his own, he would ask Iruka more tips on house care. Now he felt bad for all the work his mother had to do all this time. I’ll help her more starting today, he decided.
Though Sasuke had already done that way earlier. Itachi knew Sasuke was very thoughtful, but to think of this when he was still a child was nothing if not magnificent. His younger brother was shaping up to be a wonderful person growing up.
Itachi could just cry right now. How wonderful. The future is looking brighter.
“Great job, Naruto. Can you please take the snacks? It’s in the bowl on the counter,” said Iruka who had just came in, tray filled with tea cups in his hands.
“There’s no need for that. I don’t want to trouble you.”
“It’s no trouble, and it’s all done, anyway. So just take it. Sasuke, you like hot chocolate, right?”
The man gave a tea cup to Sasuke which was apparently filled with hot chocolate as opposed to the one filled with tea which was handed to him.
The rest of the noon passed by in a relaxed manner. Itachi never felt at such a peace for a long time. The job, the duty, the clan, and everything seemed to have weighed on him for too long that he didn’t even notice it.
Itachi left Iruka’s place with a lighter heart and a more peaceful mind. Sasuke also appeared to have enjoyed his time with the young teacher and Naruto. Itachi made plans to keep doing this from now on. He rarely feel so refreshed nowadays.
“Do you like Iruka-sensei, Sasuke?”
“I do. Iruka-sensei is always so nice, even if he’s a bit loud sometimes. He also doesn’t force me to learn jutsu like other teachers did.”
It wasn’t like Itachi did not know what kind of pressure Sasuke was facing, having their father as the clan leader and him as the elder brother. However, Itachi just thought that it was a good thing for Sasuke to learn all the jutsus he could. No one knew how long the peace would last. How long our clan will last…
Well, Itachi was about to do something about that. Hopefully, it would go well or he might become a rogue nin. That was not something he wanted.