It's not what it looks like
Itachi could hear laughter. Hollow and broken and mad. It took him a moment to register it was coming from him. All around him was blood. It was all over the floor and the walls and the ceiling, and he had the somewhat hysterical thought that they’d probably have to hire professionals to clean it all up. Couldn’t assign a mess like this as a D rank after all. It might traumatise the innocent little genins. After all some of them were two whole years younger than he was. The bitterness in that thought surprised him a little, it was more pettiness than he’d expected to be able to feel through the waves of grief and horror.
There was blood all over him as well, on his clothes, on his hands, in his hair, but that wouldn’t take professionals to clean up. The clothes he could burn and as for the rest. Well blood washed off people’s skin a lot easier than it did soft furnishings. He was growing a little lightheaded, and there were tears in his eyes that might have been blood or saltwater, but still he couldn’t stop laughing, could barely breathe through it. Sasuke looked terrified. Good, he should be, he had to be. He’d have to be strong to survive on his own and if fear of Itachi could provide motivation for that, well Itachi was perfectly prepared to be a nightmare for him. The sheer enormity of what he’d done hit him again, and he felt a sense of elation that was half adrenaline half shock. He’d be a legend for this, mothers would frighten their children to sleep with his name, his story would be spoken in whispers by hardened Anbu, all across the land of fire and beyond people would speak in horror and awe of Itachi who killed the entire Uchiha clan in one night. Sasuke was looking at him in fear, and shock, and disbelief, and a slowly growing hatred that Itachi was glad to see even as it cut him to the bone.
Maybe it wasn’t enough though, a mad little voice whispered at the back of his mind. He should make sure. A genjutsu would do it. Just to remind Sasuke to hate him, to fear him, to grow powerful in hopes of defeating him. The thought of his sweet innocent little brother consumed by vengeance stabbed at Itachi’s heart, but if Itachi had proved one thing tonight it was that the time for mercy had passed. Better that Sasuke find purpose in hating him than risk his little brother falling into despair. Despair was weakness and a shinobi who displayed weakness was easy prey for the likes of Danzo.
He looked down at his little brother, shaking, sharingan activated for the first time and finally stopped laughing. Fuck how had it come to this? Careful balancing act all fallen down and there was never a safety net. Shisui was deaddeaddead and he was alone, all alone, no more Uchiha, he’d made sure of it, all dead, everyone. He shook but didn’t allow himself to cry, he felt like if he started he’d never stop. He wasn’t alone though, it was worse than that. Sasuke was here with him, tears in his eyes and Itachi was about to leave him alone in a village with the likes of Danzo. Alone in a village that was too weak and corrupt to protect him. He was a child with a valuable bloodline and Itachi had just killed the clan that had protected him. He’d need all the strength hatred could give him.
Itachi looked into his little brother’s tear filled eyes and tried to summon up the will to use the tsukuyomi. He tried, and found that he couldn’t do it. But he had to, the madness at the back of his head whispered, it was the only way to protect him. Then another voice deep in the depths of his mind spoke, soft and seductive and equally mad. What if there was another way.
Blood of the clan, belongs with the clan. Uchiha belonged with Uchiha. That was clan law, clan tradition. He and Sasuke were the only Uchiha left, Sasuke belonged with him. To abandon him, to leave him alone in this village would be a dereliction of duty.
He was leaving the village though. He was going to be a missing nin, was it right to take a child with him? It wasn’t safe, certainly it wasn’t a suitable environment for raising children.
“Hatake did it.” The soft voice whispered in the dark places of his mind, and Itachi found himself seriously considering its words. Hatake had done it. He’d taken a kid even younger and more high profile than Sasuke, and he’d run and they hadn’t been seen since. So that was a thing you could do, you could take kids with you when you went missing nin. Hatake had done it and got away with it, and Itachi was every bit as much of a genius as Hatake was. Anyway Sasuke was his brother, technically Itachi was his legal guardian now. It would effectively amount to child abandonment if he left Sasuke here.
His decision made, Itachi knocked Sasuke out with a sleep genjutsu. He would have to explain things later, for now he had to get them both clear before Danzo figured out his change of plans.
…
It had been nearly since Kakashi and Zabuza had left and Naruto was bored. So very bored. He’d had an idea though. He just had to convince his new best friend Haku that it was a good plan.
“Hey hey, Haku, we should totally go exploring.” Haku looked sceptical.
“Zabuza sama and Hatake san said to wait in the village until they came back.”
“Yeah but I’m soo boorred. Besides, Ni-san knows I get bored easily, if he left us here it means he must want us to explore. Hey what if there’s some dastardly plot going on and he’s trusting us to find out whats going on ‘cause we’re kids and no-one would suspect, so he and Zabuza san went on a mission as a distraction and left us here where we could investigate.” Haku’s head spun slightly as he tried to follow Naruto’s twisted chain of logic.
“But Naruto” Haku pointed out reasonably, “if there was something dastardly going on what would be the point sending us. We’re kids so there isn’t much we could do about it even if we found out.”
“Yeah but that’s what makes it such a brilliant plan. Cause normal kids wouldn’t be able to do anything, but we could ‘cause we’re awesome dattebayo, and they’d never see it coming cause we’re all little and cute so they’ll let us get really close and then bam. We use our awesome ninja powers to defeat them.” Naruto was jumping up and down with excitement by this point, and despite himself Haku found himself considering his words. It was true, Haku was far more skilled than most ninja his age and he felt fully confident in his ability to subdue opponents up to the level of high chunin. He didn’t know about Naruto but the boy seemed confident, and his older brother was the famed Hatake Kakashi, so he’d probably taught him a lot. Still he wasn’t sure it was a good idea to go against Hatake san’s specific instructions.
“But if Hatake san wanted us to do that wouldn’t he have told us, and given us information on our enemy?”
“Nah. Ni-san says it’s important to look underneath the underneath. He’s always doing stuff like this, telling me to do one thing when he secretly wants me to do something else. He says it’s good for my deductive reasoning skills.” Haku was still fairly dubious, but honestly he was fairly bored himself, and it wasn’t like anything really bad would happen if they just went for a little wander in the lands surrounding the village.
Fifteen hours later and Haku was seriously rethinking his position. Their adventure had started off harmlessly enough, they’d wandered through the woods, practiced tree jumping and played ninja hide and seek (which is like civilian hide and seek except that both participants have to hide and seek at the same time and the wined is the one that can sneak up on the other.) It had all been going so well, until they’d ended up on the grounds of an all girls boarding school, and gotten captured.
The way that teacher had managed to grab them both by the ears and drag them inside had not been natural. They might have been kids but they were still ninja’s. No civillain should have been able to hold them that easily. They’d been hauled up in front of the headmistress, who had been… unimpressed.
“So you must be the new girls.” She’d said in a voice that sent shivers down both boys backs “We were warned about you. You should both be ashamed of yourselves running around like little savages.” Then she rounded on Naruto, “And I don’t know what you think you’re wearing but in my establishment, I expect you to dress in a manner befitting young ladies.”
“But…” Haku tried to interject but the woman was having none of it.
“You will both be escorted to your lessons where you will learn to behave youselves in such a manner as to no longer bring shame upon your father’s houses. It is my job to turn you into well-mannered girls and I will not fail in my duty.” The headmistress’s eyes burned with the fires of hell, and Haku swallowed nervously.
“But we’re not girls we’re ninja dattebayo.” Naruto interrupted, and soon wished he hadn’t when the woman turned her full attention back on him.
“We were warned about you Ariko chan and your father has made it very clear he wants these silly ideas about running away to become a ninja to cease. You are the heir to the Yamada clan and it’s time to start acting like it. Now Ran chan will escort you to your lessons. Try to behave yourselves.”
And with that, Haku and Naruto had been packed off to lessons. It had been equal parts humiliating and horrifying. Pre-adolescent girls were brutal, and the lessons had left him feeling woefully uneducated. He was a genius, if he’d been to ninja academy he’d probably have already graduated, but these girls were studying stuff he’d never even heard of. What on earth was home economics, and why was it important? He felt completely inadequate and the fact that these girls would probably be just as lost if placed into a ninja academy classroom was little comfort. Clearly there were significant differences between a civilian education and a ninja one. It didn’t help that Naruto seemed to be settling in just fine, although that was probably a combination of his natural charisma and the fact that he was young enough that no-one expected him to know anything yet.
Well Naruto had been settling in fine until one of the teachers had spotted him reading out loud to his classmates from the latest Icha Icha book. Haku still wasn’t sure how he’d gotten his hands on it, and he really didn’t want to think about the fact that Naruto was familiar enough with the plot that he barely had to look at the text. Anyway that little incident had ended up with both of them back up in front of the head teacher. That’s when shit got confusing.
…
The mission had gone surprisingly smoothly. Zabuza had been every bit as skilled as his bingo book entry made him out to be, and after some initial awkwardness had turned out to be very good company. He was refreshingly blunt, and had a viciously dark sense of humour, that mostly seemed to come out when he was disembowelling the enemy. Kakashi could appreciate that in a mission partner. Things had in fact gone so well that at the end of it they exchanged summons details with a view to staying in contact. You never knew when a mission requiring a bit of extra back up might come your way after all. Really it had been going too well.
He shouldn’t have been surprised when they arrived back to find their kids standing in the middle of a smoking crater trying to look innocent. Kakashi held back the urge to sigh, really, what had he expected, leaving Naruto unsupervised was always a recipe for disaster. Lock that kid in a padded room with no furniture and within hours he’d find a portal to an alternate dimension, go through it, save said alternate dimension from an evil dinosaur wizard dictator using only the power of friendship, rescue a princess and receive the locals equivalent of a medal of honour before coming home slightly scuffed and even more confident than before. Trouble just seemed to find Naruto, Kakashi had long since given up trying to fight it.
Still he did feel an incipient headache as he and Zabuza each grabbed their respective child and disappeared before the locals could tie them to recent events. It was a good thing they’d already collected their pay, Kakashi had a sinking feeling it would be a while before they could show their faces in this part of Tea Country again.
Naruto’s explanation was slightly incoherent. Something about Naruto and Haku being kidnapped and sent to school by evil minions of a head teacher who’d turned out to be an eldritch abomination from beyond the stars, and they’d been forced to do needlework, and then nearly eaten but Naruto had talked to her and explained the value of life and love and the way the people we care about make it all worthwhile and she’d had an epiphany and decided to return to her home dimension so that she could stand for office and help her society move into a brighter tomorrow. She’d left behind only a smoking crater where the school used to be and a handful of stickers for her mayoral campaign. She was apparently a really nice being, once you got to know her. After listening to Naruto’s story Kakashi had just sighed, ruffled his hair and offered to take him out for ramen. Parenthood was so much more complicated than the books made it seem.