Chapter Text
Kakashi had exactly one dream about foxes, that very night and never again even though Sasuke continued to dream of them for decades.
It began in a familiar way; he was on the hunt. Pack was with him, all around him in the darkened woods; he could feel their call and response echoing in his skull. He flew through the trees as though he were weightless, and a stab of excitement and unsettling arousal spiked through him every time he caught a glimpse of his prey’s beautiful orange and white tail disappearing into the brush. She was fast, but they were faster, knew the woods here better. She knew it as well as he did; he felt it in her chakra, the welling panic and hopelessness that proceeded the choice to either give up or fight.
Kakashi was fine either way. It would be quick no matter what.
The dream drew muddled, confused, as he felt his prey hit the edge of the river and stop. The trees parted for him; he was floating. His pack was suddenly gone, and when he caught sight of his prey, it was no longer a fox, but a beautiful girl standing ankle-deep in the river, looking out over it in the moonlight with her hands curled in the skirt of the long white dress the water tugged at the hems of.
His girl. His Naruto.
He called to her, desire and love breaking their banks inside him, flooding him with what he hoped was joy—gods, he wanted to still be capable of joy—and then she turned to him, showing him the painfully familiar ragged, bloody hole he had punched through her perfect chest.
Adrenaline flooded him. He screamed, sprinting towards her with a mantra of no no no no please echoing inside his empty head, but he wasn’t fast enough; she was falling backwards into the water, her endless blue eyes glassy and distant, and he was going to be too late to—
Kakashi woke with a start, jerking hard enough to set the hammock swaying and tightening his grip on his sleeping partner so hard that she yelped. “Sorry,” he forced out as he pulled his nails from her shoulder, trying to catch his breath as he blinked rapidly in the darkness of their makeshift abode. He’d woken Sasuke, but he was kindly pretending that he hadn’t, smoothing his chakra out artificially and lying still in his hammock; Naruto offered him no such comforting illusions, pushing herself up with a hand on her chest still half-asleep but with genuine worry creasing her brow as she squinted down at him in the low light.
“Nigh’mare?” she slurred as he cracked open his sharingan to see her better, to assure himself that she was safe and unharmed. She was rubbing at her eyes with her other hand, and gods, she was so beautiful with her hair mussed in its thick braid and her lips pulled down into a pout that screamed put me back to bed.
His heart was thundering under her palm. He wrapped a hand around her wrist, taking a deep, calming breath and concentrating on the weight of his lover instead of the unpleasant scratch of his overlong hair against the rough canvas that supported them, and nodded shortly, shutting his eyes as he let his breath out on a long, shuddering sigh. “Yes,” he admitted softly after a moment, wondering not for the first time why he was having nightmares in the field again, for the first time since he was a teenager. “Not a bad one,” he lied with the image of her broken open ribcage seared into the backs of his eyelids. “Just need to… take a walk.” What he really needed was no sleepy, worried eyes on his mercilessly uncovered face; he slipped out of the hammock as gracefully as he could and pulled up his mask, bodily rearranging his bride into a sleeping position even as she mumbled half-hearted protests about coming with him. “Shh,” he hushed her, leaning down to press a kiss to her forehead, and another to the metal glinting in her ear. “Back to bed. I’ll rejoin you soon, yeah? I’m fine. Get your beauty sleep.”
“Gonna need a lot of that,” she mumbled self-deprecatingly as she hid her eyes in the crook of her elbow, and Kakashi smiled crookedly down at her, trying to push back a wave of anxiety about what he would do if she got hurt badly again, if she…
He couldn’t even think it.
“Princesses generally do,” he teased her, wishing his voice wasn’t shaky, that he could be as solid as rock for her, that he wasn’t built on sand. Sasuke made a sound at this, a near-silent irritated huff, and he suppressed something like nervous laughter as he assured her again that he was fine and would be right back, even if both of those statements were bald-faced lies.
Stepping out into the cool, viciously early morning air helped. He sucked in a series of calming breaths with his eyes shut, listening to the rustling of the tropical woods around them and the steady susurration of ocean waves crashing on the beach’s face. It was just before dawn, by his estimation; watching the sunrise would probably help him—
Awareness of the uninvited chakra signature shivered over him suddenly, even though he was positive it hadn’t moved, that it had been there since before he exited their shelter. Calm and patient. Familiar in a way that set his teeth on edge. Suddenly grateful he’d paused to get dressed, his dream forgotten, he withdrew a kunai from his pocket, his eyes snapping open to fix on the figure that sat next to their smoldering fire from the night before on the sand below, outlined clearly even in the dark by his sharingan.
Generally, Kakashi liked to work off of data, strategy, decisions made carefully and decisively, but it was his gut that made his feet move, a powerful certainty curling within him that this particular man’s calm presence on their beach didn’t make any sense unless he was missing a piece of the puzzle. A thousand questions that he’d put to bed years ago and dozens more that had stirred within him more recently began to take shape in his mind with each step until he could almost see the outline of what he didn’t know. But he kept himself on guard, kept his grip tight on the handle of his kunai and his focus on protecting his puppies until his death if necessary as he stopped short a few yards behind the intruder and greeted him softly by name.
“Itachi.”
The man in question turned to look over his shoulder, his lined, tired face pinching into an unsettlingly friendly, relieved smile. He looked like hell, to be frank; like it had been thirty years since they’d last seen each other and not merely seven or eight. “Kakashi,” he answered, his voice rough from disuse; he cleared his throat, tacking on an ironic, tongue-in-cheek, “Senpai. I’ve heard you married. Congratulations.”
Kakashi scanned over him, trying to figure out what his game was. He was dressed like an ascetic in formless rags, squinting badly (overused his mangekyo, he noted cautiously) with a simple wooden cane settled across his thighs. He looked ancient, thin, tortured; in the part of his mind that wasn’t focused on the possibility of battle, he was seeing the Weasel mask tilted up, up, up towards him, hearing a child’s voice ask him why is it that you don’t have a girlfriend, senpai? Are ANBU not allowed? “Are you here for Sasuke?” he asked coldly, feeling his shoulders tense up as thoughts of his apprentice flickered across his mind, grateful beyond words that the boy had gone back to sleep.
Itachi’s gaze grew wistful, pained, even as the corner of his thin, bloodless lips quirked up. “No,” he sighed, sounding almost regretful. “I’m here for you.”
Stunned, mind blank, Kakashi watched his once-subordinate reach within his ragged traveling cloak—his movements slow and measured like he was trying to make sure he didn’t startle Kakashi into attack—and withdraw a tattered notebook that he tossed to land just an inch or two past the toe of his boot. Wary of a trap, he didn’t reach for it immediately, instead studying the man’s chakra signature, which appeared to be undisguised, mostly calm with a rippling current of anxiety occasionally disturbing its surface. Slowly, he bent to pluck it up, and even more slowly, he cracked it open, eyes darting repeatedly between the words on the page and the potential threat before him until the moment he registered what he was holding.
“You’re the spy,” Kakashi realized, staring blankly down at notes on the fighting style of a missing-nin from the Stone called Deidara, a known member of the Akatsuki.
“I am.”
His mind was instantly alight with questions that raced too fast to put his finger on; in his head, he was looking down at the letter in Tsunade’s secret drawer labeled do not open until necessary. Unfortunately, what left his lips was a breathless, stunned, “Why a duck?”
Itachi laughed, the sound a little raspy. It made him cough, and he cleared his throat before shrugging and turning his attention back to the ocean, explaining casually, “S’my summons. Didn’t really fit in with the mystique I was trying to cultivate, so I always kept it under wraps. Perfect for delivering messages.”
Kakashi logged that information away mechanically, the bulk of his mind on the Uchiha problem. The fact that it had made no sense, that a dedicated ANBU shinobi would turn on their village so young. That such a dutiful son would betray his family with such callous cruelty. That the sweet boy under the Weasel mask, the boy that had loved his baby brother to pieces, would wake up one day willing to slit the throats of nearly his entire extended family, including four infants. The truth popped into his mind fully-formed, the only possibility that aligned with the ragged edges of all the holes in the official story, and he felt his knees threaten to give as he realized in a pained whisper, “It was on orders, wasn’t it? … The Uchiha were planning something.”
Itachi’s shoulders hunched in. Slowly, even as Kakashi reeled, questioning his entire life, his entire career, he set his cane aside and pulled his knees to his chest to wrap his arms around them, looking every inch the shy boy that had once hovered at Kakashi’s elbow looking for approval. “If I had said no,” he confessed to the ocean, sounding small, and Kakashi’s heart shattered as he saw Itachi at age thirteen in his mind’s eye, receiving his heinous final orders in the shadowy office of the Sandaime. “Sasuke would have gone with the rest of my family.” He took a deep, slow breath. “If I had said no, the job would have gone to you.”
The earth dropped out from under Kakashi’s feet as his heart froze solid in his chest. He couldn’t breathe; no air could pass around the question of would I have done it? lodged violently in his throat, afraid of the answer, afraid of the fact that at the age Itachi was now, the age he’d been when the massacre was ordered (fucking ordered), he’d been a suicidal functioning alcoholic with a stimulant dependency looking for any excuse at all to hurt himself however he could.
He crossed the sand on unsteady legs, collapsing beside the boy who had once been his responsibility and burying his face in his hands, the notebook full of Akatsuki secrets heavy with the weight of its price in his lap. “I’m so sorry,” he rasped, feeling tears of regret sting in Obito’s eye, betrayal and humiliation of the deepest kind burning in his gut every time the third Hokage’s lined face flashed across his mind’s eye. “I’m so sorry, Itachi.”
“You’re different,” the young man responded easily, disarming him. He turned his attention to the rising sun that was slowly beginning to illuminate the proliferation of white in his hair, the sallowness of his thin skin. “I’m glad. … How is he?”
Kakashi tried to gather his thoughts, tried to compartmentalize; after a moment, he succeeded sufficiently to speak. “Hurt,” he managed. “Damaged, angry. His dearest goal in life is to restore honor to his family by taking you out.” Itachi nodded, some mixture of grief and pride shining on his weathered features. “But… especially over the last year… He’s gotten better. Happier. More connected to the people around him. Kinder and gentler, less single-minded. And he’s smart and talented, but you know that.”
“Still nice to hear,” the man sighed, sounding bizarrely content with this news. “I… miss him. Every day.” He misses you, too, Kakashi didn’t say, knowing it wasn’t his place. He tried, briefly, to grapple with the impossibility of getting Sasuke to understand the truth, then pushed it away, overwhelmed. He ground his palm into his eye where he could feel a headache threatening, and was surprised when Itachi turned to him with a guilt-ridden expression to ask in a subdued, regretful tone, “And… Naruto. Is she alright?”
Kakashi’s eye flashed to the other man’s face, studying it, his body drawing up tight and defensive as he tried to determine what was being asked about his girl. Had he somehow heard about the burn? Was there some plot to take her or hurt her that they’d avoided without being aware of it? He reached for her chakra signature, faint over the distance and through the stone wall of their shelter, but it was fine, sleeping. “Alright in regards to what?” he asked, guarded.
Itachi’s fingers dug into his ragged clothing, white-knuckled, and he turned his face away like an ashamed child before managing a low, “It’s—it’s why I decided my tenure as a spy was coming to an end, Kakashi, especially once we stepped into the market afterwards. I started planning the moment it became clear that they weren’t just tossing ideas around. I… couldn’t stomach it. I know that’s ridiculous, maybe, given what I’ve done with my own hands, but I just couldn’t…”
The hair on Kakashi’s arms was standing up; he could feel the weight of what was going unsaid, even as he lacked the context to understand it, and what left him was a bitten, warning, “Spit it out. Why wouldn’t Naruto be okay?”
Slowly, Itachi turned his head, squinting harshly at Kakashi as realization bloomed over his familiar-yet-different features. “You… never put it together,” he murmured. His clouded eyes hit the sand between them, and he sounded every bit the little boy that had first been put on Kakashi’s squad as he explained in barely more than a whisper, “It was us. Our fault. We… became aware of the photos being produced of her and tracked them to their source. Lied and promised Seki an obscene amount of money if he could procure her for us.” Kakashi’s ears were ringing, his mind and his stomach achingly empty. “I didn’t think he’d be able to, frankly. I’ve worried ever since that they… hurt her.”
The spying was on the orders of the Hokage, too, Kakashi knew instinctively, without being told. It was probably the only reason Itachi hadn’t taken himself out with the rest of his clan; it would have been the only reason that Kakashi would’ve stuck around, too. He tried to spool the irrational rage twisting through his body, the desire to blame, to break bones, to feel flesh split under the impact of his fists, but he shoved it down, instead trying to imagine what he’d do if his orders from the office of the Sandaime had ever included helping a terrorist organization profit off of the sexual abuse of children. They raped her, you son of a bitch, he didn’t say. They choked her half to death and poisoned her and put her in a damned shock collar. “She… recovered,” he said instead as he carefully forced his fists to unclench, the words blank as fresh snow, and he knew by the tormented look Itachi shot his way that he understood some of what wasn’t being said, even if he didn’t know the details. With a flash of irritation at himself, he realized that he’d gotten so caught up in Naruto’s recovery that he’d failed to think critically enough about what had happened—it should have tipped him off that Seki had chakra-draining cuffs. Those were expensive, illegal, and difficult to make; he was almost certain, given this new information, that the Akatsuki had donated them. Desperate to think about anything else before he lost his mind or his temper or both, he reached and touched upon the realization that— “You’re dying, aren’t you?”
“Haven’t exactly seen a doctor, but it feels like it,” Itachi responded dryly. There was no regret or fear or anger in his tone, no grief. Like he’d already accepted how brutal and ugly and short his life in service to the Leaf had been.
“You need me to convey your notes home.”
“Yes.”
“… Is it enough?” Enough to take them out, enough to change the tides of the coming conflict?
“I… hope so. I believe so.” He tilted his head back to squint up at the pink and orange stained sky. “I have to believe it’ll be enough.”
Kakashi… had things he should probably had said, things he probably should have done. But that was the moment that he heard the door to their shelter slam open and felt Sasuke’s killing intent wash over them like a dark flood. He sprang to his feet, knowing full well that there would be no reasoning with him if he was already on the war path, and tucked the notes away into his pocket for safekeeping as he put himself in between Itachi and his younger brother, who had vaulted himself over the old stone steps and landed graceful as a jungle cat in the sand below, Naruto scrambling far less coordinatedly after him in her borrowed nightgown, clearly not understanding just yet what was going on.
He’d have to let them fight, Kakashi realized the moment Sasuke fixed his spinning sharingan glare on his rage-twisted face, clearly seeing him as nothing more than an obstacle between him and his goal. His teeth were bared in a snarl, his body language dangerous; Kakashi rose both palms in a gesture of submission, wondering if Itachi would survive the encounter soon to follow in his weakened state as he urged in low, soothing tones, “Do what you have to do, Sasuke, but I need you to understand that I have independent evidence that he’s telling the truth.”
The words didn’t seem to register; he heard Itachi getting to his feet behind him, joy at seeing his last remaining family fluttering in his chakra signature even as it wound up tight in preparation for a fight. “Get out of the way, sensei,” Sasuke snapped viciously over Naruto’s confused pleading to know what was going on, tugging at his sleeve and eyeing the unknown intruder in their paradise warily. When Kakashi didn’t move, he took a threatening step forward, and his voice, shaking with rage, broke badly as he hissed with trembling shoulders, “He killed my mom, Kakashi, get out of my fucking way.”
Naruto gasped; in the next second, she was taking up a fighting stance, too, her chakra swelling vast and menacing within her as she turned a hard glare on what she’d identified as her opponent, and keeping her out of the inevitable fray became Kakashi’s priority. He side-stepped, and in the same moment Sasuke rushed forward with a kunai glinting in his fist, he flashed towards his girl, snatching her up roughly around the waist with one arm and the shoulders with the other, pinning her arms to her sides even as she screamed and thrashed against him.
“He needs me,” she protested, clawing at him, and bless her, she still didn’t seem to realize how much stronger she was than him, that if she put more chakra into it, she could burst from his grip without any issue. Gods, it’s lucky I got to be a chain, he thought frantically as he tried to hush her, feeling her chakra swell between her palms the moment she gave up on getting free. The sounds of the last of the Uchiha clan clashing in deadly battle swallowed her next cry, and by the time he was able to understand what she was saying—I have to, sensei, he said he needs me—her chakra was arcing across the sand, across the water where Itachi had wisely goaded Sasuke to pursue him. Kakashi watched with a sense of awe as it collided with Sasuke’s back and his chakra reserves instantly doubled in size, only continuing to grow as Naruto pumped more into him.
It caused his apprentice to shriek, the sound one of grief and pain and rage, and fire burst from him in all directions, so hot even at a distance that Kakashi flinched and spun in place, jerking Naruto to shield her from it, so hot that a wave of uncomfortably warm steam thick enough to dampen his clothes hit them a moment later. It disrupted the flow of her chakra, but to his cold shock, this didn’t result in Sasuke losing access to it; Naruto had seemingly gifted it to him. He had no time to try to process that particular miracle or its implications yet, though; he was focused on getting in her ear, shouting over her frantic protests, “The Sandaime ordered him to do it, Naruto, and he’s been spying on the—“
“You’re lying,” she accused, beginning to thrash once more. “You’re lying because you don’t want me to get hurt. Let me go, let me go, Sasuke needs—”
“Sasuke needs to talk to his brother,” Kakashi insisted, tightening his grip until it even hurt him to hold her so strictly, his joints protesting the force. “Think about it, Naruto. Think about what the Sandaime did to you.”
For a moment, it didn’t seem to register. She continued to thrash and fight, to scream, to curse him, and then she froze, like it had all clicked into place for her the same way it had for him. His heart broke for her as he practically heard the illusions she’d built about her world shatter, as she went limp with a moan of, “Oh, gods. Oh, gods, sensei, what do we do?”
“He won’t hurt Sasuke,” he soothed her best he could as he experimentally loosened his grip, somehow certain of that fact down to his bones. Maybe that made sense; there had been a full year that Kakashi’s conditioning had required he trust Itachi absolutely.
“What if—what if Sasuke kills him before he knows—?”
“He might,” Kakashi admitted. “He might, baby, but it’s—not our place. Those two are the only ones who can have this conversation.”
It didn’t look like much of a conversation. A blast of fire that shot out so far that it would have hit the shores of Umibe if it had been at a different angle seared across the surface of the ocean, sending up more billowing steam; the two fighting figures were distant now, partially obscured, and as he watched, lightning arced between them, so powerful he felt the static in his hair, watched it raise individual strands off of his girl’s head. She bit out a helpless sob and turned in his arms, hiding her face in his chest, and he held her, his eyes fixed on the battle and his heart in his throat as he prayed that he’d taught Sasuke enough patience and humility to hear what his brother had to say.
The battle stretched on for agonizing minutes, its combatants a whirl of violence and fire; Sasuke’s voice carried to them occasionally, the emotions raw but the words unintelligible. “Go get dressed,” he whispered into Naruto’s hair as he watched one of the figures go flying through the air, his pulse pounding in his temples. She jerked in his arms, a sound of protest leaving her throat, but after a moment, she acquiesced, taking off at a sprint; he could only assume she’d seen logic in being ready for whatever was coming next. He found himself pacing across the packed sand of the beach face in her absence, his eyes trained on the battle in the distance, and had to physically restrain himself from intervening when Sasuke’s cry of agony traveled over the water to him.
At last, though, just around the time Naruto was returning in her usual shinobi uniform except she’d borrowed one of Kakashi’s shirts, he saw both figures freeze; relief hit him with a head rush as he realized Itachi had likely captured his brother in a genjutsu, would be able to force a listening ear from him. The Sasuke who had first been put on his team would have been unable to hear it, but maybe, maybe Kakashi had done well enough with him that—
“What’s happening?” Naruto demanded beside him, dancing from foot to foot with nervous energy. “What’s happening, sensei, why—why did they stop?”
“It’s almost over,” Kakashi assured her in the most comforting voice he could manage, drawing her into his arms once again in case she got it in her head to try to intervene like he knew she wanted to. It would be over soon either way—Sasuke was dipping into his own chakra reserves already, having blown through Naruto’s at a rate that that honestly concerned him, and Itachi was growing weak, near the end of his own supply. What happened to him? Just the stress? “They’re talking now, in a room in Itachi’s mind. Any second, they’ll…”
Even as he spoke, the figures in the steam became animate once more, one of them stumbling while the other fell straight through the surface of the water, as though he’d forgotten where his physical form was. The figure who’d kept his footing—Itachi, he thought—strode over and bent down, pulling the other back up by his collar, embracing him briefly before setting him down on his feet once more. Oh, thank the gods. He’s been listening to me after all.
“It’s over?” his girl asked in a shaken whisper as the figures approached, and Kakashi scrubbed a hand over his face as he nodded, trying to work out how to lower his blood pressure as quickly as possible. His head was throbbing. His Hokage had ordered a child to execute over a hundred and twenty members of his own family. The Akatsuki were responsible for his wife’s rape.
“Think so.”
…
Naruto felt quite as though she were still asleep, having some sort of terrible, hideous dream. Nothing made sense to her, as she tried to conceptualize the Sandaime—her first and, for most of her life, only protector—as the bad guy. Tried to understand that he was responsible for Sasuke’s pain, for making him an orphan, for taking away his entire family. That he’d made someone younger than her kill his own mom and dad. She couldn’t take her eyes off of the pair of brothers making their way across the water towards them, couldn’t make herself focus as she floundered for meaning. “Why did he agree to…?”
“Only way to spare his brother’s life,” Kakashi bit out, taking her meaning immediately. His body language was tense, and he was pacing again; she could see him out of the corner of her eye. “Only way to save his bloodline.”
‘Poor little Uchiha,’ Kurama sighed, sounding resigned. ‘Another victim of your ridiculous monkey politics.’
Naruto barely heard him. The Sandaime had wanted the Uchihas wiped out. Why? Hadn’t they been a part of the village since its inception? Trusted law enforcement, members of the community? She was old enough to remember the Uchiha, always identifiable in the market by their particular dress. They had been a bit kinder to her on average, willing to make eye contact and apologize if they bumped into her; none of them had ever been cruel to her that she could recall. Sasuke talked about them as good people. What could they possibly have done that warranted eradication?
(There was no possible answer that made it okay, was there?)
By the time Sasuke and Itachi hit the shore, they were walking fairly close together, though neither of them looked at each other, Sasuke rather drowned-looking, dripping wet with his eyes on his feet and his brother gazing around the island as though taking it in now that the sun was peeking above the waves in earnest. There was tension between them, but she felt no aggression, and when they all four stood within conversational distance, her teammate cleared his throat and told the sand between them, “Ah, Naruto. This is my brother. He’d like to meet you.”
Instantly, she shot her husband an uncertain look, catching his eye and receiving a reassuring nod in return. “They’ve probably just spoken for hours,” he explained, always so careful to notice when she was confused and explain without being asked. “Itachi is one of the best in the world at time dilation genjutsu.”
Sasuke nodded confirmation, still staring at the ground as he raked his fingers through his wet hair, seemingly lost in thought, still processing. But his attention was drawn to Naruto as, too stunned to do anything else, she bowed to the newcomer and introduced herself blankly, “Um, I’m Naruto. Pleased to meet you.”
The man returned the bow deeply, introducing himself formally as Uchiha Itachi, and took a decisive step forward into her space that made both members of her team go stiff, but she held herself still, letting him approach despite her anxiety. He took her gently by the face, cradling it in both hands as he tilted her head back to examine her with a harsh squint, and frantically, she crunched numbers in her head, trying to figure out how this sickly, half-blind middle-aged man could possibly be Itachi, could possibly be younger than Kakashi—almost a decade younger, to boot—but then he smiled, and the family resemblance clicked into place. He looked just like Sasuke. “You’ve grown up pretty,” he complimented her plainly, as though stating a fact; there was no hint of flattery in his words. “Look just like your mother. She was a wonderful woman. She used to do chakra control drills with us on Tuesdays and Thursdays my first semester at the academy; always brought the most delicious sandwiches, and the worst cookies.”
It seemed like it was time for him to let her go, especially given how Kakashi was growing restless behind her, his chakra control slipping and revealing a stab of possessive anger that made Itachi’s lips curl up as he squinted over her shoulder at her sensei, then refocused on her face, moving in so close that she could count the lashes rimming his milky eyes as he studied her, using his fingertips to better explore the contours of her nose, her cheeks, her jaw, the folds of her ear—stopping to fiddle with her new piercing—the column of her neck. He trailed his hands over her shoulders and down her arms, squeezing her thin wrists in his hands and then feeling her palms.
He shot her a canny, evaluating look as he finally let her go. “You aren’t a shinobi?” he asked, his gaze flickering accusingly towards Kakashi. “With a chakra signature like that?”
“Of course I’m a shinobi,” Naruto blustered, cutting off both members of her team who’d jumped to her defense. “Why would you think that I’m not—?”
“No muscle development,” Itachi told her, circling her with that same steady, investigative air that made her feel immensely put on the spot, but not at all threatened or sexualized. More like a painting put up for criticism. “No callouses. No excess chakra in the joints of your ankles and knees. Your body is civilian.” He hummed. “The nine-tails?” She nodded, and he nodded back, reaching towards her stomach and pausing for permission before pressing his fingers just under her ribs. “Your body is that of a starving civilian,” he corrected himself, sounding amused. “I never pictured you going after anyone so waifish, otōto. But you’ll make a fine Uchiha matriarch, Uzumaki Naruto.”
Naruto froze as she watched the man step back and bow to her once again, feeling her face flush violently red; Sasuke was rather pink himself as his jaw dropped off to the side. The first syllable of a furious nii-san! left his lips before he cut himself off, shaking his head indignantly as he denied, “I told you she was my— She’s not my girlfriend, Itachi, she just—”
“I don’t get it, either,” Kakashi interrupted, sounding amused yet tense as he shifted forward, setting a proprietary hand on Naruto’s lower back that made her stomach flutter and drew Itachi’s squinty gaze. “They’re unreasonably close for two people with absolutely zero romantic chemistry. I try not to let myself get jealous.”
His intention was clear—he wanted to make sure everyone present was aware of who she belonged to and who was allowed to touch her. She saw it process on Itachi’s face, watched surprise register for a moment before it was blinked away, and she found herself blurting out, “Her name is Sakura.” Sasuke’s head whipped around, a complicated look on his face but no warning in his wary eyes, so she ignored him in favor of his brother, stepping closer to him to plead with him earnestly, “And she’s so much better than me. Beautiful, with the most amazing green eyes you’ve ever seen—” Itachi shut his own milky eyes, as though to picture it, and, emboldened, she went on urgently, “—and her hair is straight and thick and healthy—pink, her parents come from an area in the Land of Tea where that’s not uncommon—and she’s pretty tall, not that much shorter than ‘ske was the last time we saw her. She has a strong body—a shinobi’s body—with some of the most impressive biceps in our cohort. She’s powerful, and kind, and she keeps the teme in line. She’ll be an excellent Uchiha.”
The man let her words settle, contentment rolling off of him in waves, and at length, he cracked an eye open to squint at his brother, asking him quietly, “Do you agree with her description?” When Sasuke jerked his head in a terse nod, refusing to look at either of them, he tacked on promptingly, “And you’re confident she’s waiting for you?”
“I… hope so.”
“She is.” That was Kakashi, dragging her back under his arm where she belonged by the back of her shirt, as though he couldn’t handle her proximity to Itachi for a moment longer. “She’s fiercely loyal. A fine kunoichi. She’d do your mother proud.”
Itachi smiled again, the expression sincere if tired, and murmured without quite raising his gaze to his little brother’s face, “I’m glad, otōto. Truly.”