Random Nano snippets.

[platedlizard]

The angel story:

The first time Itachi heard that he had a brother he was five years old and quietly exploring the innermost reaches of Windy Point. The everlasting wind gusted and whistled through the halls of the angel hold, occasionally bringing with it sounds from distant part of the hold. Bits and pieces of conversation and song were carried to him, Itachi had learned that if he sat very, very still in the music rooms bits and pieces of conversation would come to him if he stat very, very still. Even at five Itachi was good at the patience.

"Well?" his father asked, his voice drifting along some wayward breeze. "What is it?"

"A mortal boy," came the immediate reply. Itachi thought she was the sour old angela who had scowled at him the other day and told him he needed to sing higher, "Your father had the best contralto at your age, there's no reason why you can't, either, boy." Itachi blinked, stretched his downy wings, scowling. He had a good contralto, everyone said so. "I'm sorry, Fugaku."

His father gave a disgusted laugh. "Well, Jovah's ways are indeed mysterious. After all that--for a mortal child! Well, I trust you paid the woman off."

"Of course. At least your first son was divine, many angels get mortal after mortal year after year before producing an angel child. You were lucky."

There was an odd little pause as the wind circled nervously, and for a moment Itachi almost lost the thread of conversation before the air steadied.. His flight feathers weren't grown in yet, but he could sense the subtle changes of pressure necessary for angelic flight, an accomplishment that his father had been stoically pleased about. Straining Itachi focused, shifting slightly to catch the next bit of conversation.

"--Midoko--no, I suppose I was despite what happened to her." Itachi's ears pricked at the sound of his mother's name. He'd never known her, even at five Itachi knew that giving birth to a cherub was dangerous. It was telling, people said, that Fugaku never remarried.

Itachi sometimes wondered if his father hated him for killing his mother.

"A mortal child," his father continued. "How disappointing. I'd hoped to bring home a brother for Itachi." And with that, the quavering wind changed, carrying his father's words away from him. Only one remained, hanging in the air. Brother.

Itachi had a mortal brother."

I TOTALLY MESSED UP A NAME AND I DON'T CARE. ALSO, BROTHER ISSUES, MY HOW I LOVE BROTHER ISSUES. LITTLE DOWNY-WINGED ITACHI IS ADORABLE.



Canon-verse story:

"You fucking bastard," Naruto hissed. Between them lay the corpse of the last councilman. "And here I defended you, said there was no fucking way that you were behind the killings. You lived with me, you sick fuck."

"I never lied to you," he replied, his voice as frozen as his heart. "You just assumed I'd changed."

Naruto's eyes were red, fire red. His teeth were sharp. "Yeah, that's pretty damn obvious." His fingernails lengthened into claws. It had been a long time since the Kyuubi had taken over like this. "You are still the same selfish shit you always were, and none of the shit that happened between meant anything to you, does it?"

that was partly true because to Sasuke his brother would always be the most important person in the world to him, and nothing mattered more then restoring Itachi's honor and extracting vengeance for the way he was treated. Abused. Not even Naruto mattered that much, and certainly not Sasuke. Definitely not Sasuke.

That didn't mean that he didn't care for Naruto. That didn't mean he didn't want him to succeed.

"I swore to you that I would not attack the village," he said. "And I haven't." Even though, in Sasuke's opinion Konoha as a whole was responsible for Itachi's betrayal and death.

Naruto stared at him. "You don't get it, do you," he said after awhile, his voice flat, for Naruto. "He was a member my village. A member of my council. By killing him, you attacked my village."

Sasuke shrugged. The village was still standing, as far as he was concerned. "He ordered the death of my family. He abused my brother's loyalty. Weren't they members of your village too?"

Naruto's face wrinkled into a snarl. "That doesn't make what you did right. Not at all, Sasuke." Sasuke could see that he wanted to launch himself at him. He wasn't sure what was holding Naruto back.

"No, it makes what I did just."

Sasuke was expecting the explosion, which was probably the only thing that saved him.

He couldn't say he didn't deserve it.

When he re-entered the room the boy had stopped crying, out of exhaustion if nothing else. He dismissed his shadow clones, the jutsu copied from Naruto one day when they were both still children, although he didn't use them much in fighting, and sat down, staring at his brother's child. He was very small and far, far too thin, and simply looking at him left Sasuke terrified.

The child slept only lightly. The merest touch brought him to wakefulness. Still, Sasuke couldn't help himself, even if touching came unnaturally to him. Gentle touching, anyways. He stroked the boy's hair back, out of his face, cupping his cheek. The boy stirred at his touch and for the first time in a week his eyes opened on their own. The child's throat worked, but he didn't make a sound as uncle and nephew stared at each other. The entire scene was marked with the intense clarity that Sasuke knew was due to the Sharingan, instinctively recording everything he saw.

Then the boy closed his eyes and whimpered, rubbing at them. Sasuke caught his wrist to keep him from grinding them--rubbing ulcerated eyes might feel good for a moment, but it tended to hurt much worse in the long run--and before the boy could protest much rolled back his eyelids and dropped another medication in them. It was a topical anesthetic, and the ophthalmologist had warned him that it would slow the rate of healing down if he used it, so Sasuke limited its use as much as possible. But this, he felt, was important.

He wanted his nephew to really see him.

The child blinked, his eyelashes absurdly long for a boy. Fuck, he thought, somewhat amused, I need a name for him. The boy blinked rapidly, clearing his vision of excess liquid from the drops, and Sasuke had to restrain his hands again to keep him from rubbing his eyes. Sasuke couldn't stop looking at him. It was like looking at a five year old version of Itachi.

they won't touch you, he thought, not knowing or caring who 'they' were. The boy pulled away and seemed to take the hint, gently wiping his eyes of tears instead of rubbing. He pushed himself up shakily, and as much as Sasuke wanted to he didn't help him sit up. Simply watched him, his Sharigan-red eyes recording everything.

The boy squinted at him, and then signed something. Sasuke was puzzled, during the times when the boy was asleep he had bought books and DVDs about sign language and memorized them, the Sharigan giving him an eidetic memory. There were several languages for the deaf, and he memorized the more common ones in the hopes of actually understanding the boy in the unlikely event that he had been taught sign. All, it seems, for naught.

Nevertheless, he signed back, :Are you hungry?:

The boy looked blankly at him, and Sasuke repeated the sign for food, making a scooping motion and bringing his fingers up to his lips. The child looked confused for a moment, but nodded when Sasuke mimed the sign more slowly, fortunately the sign for food was nearly universal.

A few minutes later he was back with a steaming bowl of instant miso soup and gently propping the child up while the rice cooker heated up in the kitchen. His nephew was still so fragile that Sasuke didn't dare over-feed him, as much as he wanted to. Re-feeding syndrome Kenshin had called it when he read the riot act to Sasuke--too much food too soon and he could kill his brother's child. Kill him with kindness.

Fortunately Sasuke was not a naturally kind person.

Miso had the advantage of tasting and feeling like food while being mostly water with a bit of salt, seaweed, bean paste, and tofu. It was warm and filling without being caloric enough to stress the boy's system, so he consumed a lot of it. Sometimes he wondered if Naruto ate ramen for a similar reason, if, at some point in his childhood, he had been so neglected that the only thing he could eat were foods rich in broth and water. Sasuke hoped not.

But he couldn't remember Naruto living with anyone as a child, either.

Gently, something he was getting used to, he held the bowl to the boy's lips and let him sip. The child's hands came up and cupped his larger ones, shaking. Never once did the boy's eyes leave his, wary and trusting both at once. When the small bowl was empty he set it aside. The topical anesthetic wouldn't last for long, and when it wore off the boy would need to take pain medication and go to sleep for a while. The more he kept his eyes closed, the faster they would heal. Before he did that, however, Sasuke wanted to show him something.

He picked up the picture of Itachi from the night stand and dug out the hand-mirror he found in the sock drawer the first day here.

How do you explain to a child family relations when you don't have a common language with them?

He gave the picture and mirror to the boy and sat next to him, watching closely as the child looked between the two. Sasuke's heart clenched painfully. He didn't know if this would work.

The boy examined the picture closely, placing it and the mirror on the futon next to each other and looking from one to the other intensely as he lay on his side next to them, tracing first Itachi's image, and then his own with one small finger. Watching him Sasuke felt relieved, between his deafness, temporary blindness, and fear there had been no way to measure the child's intelligence, but here was incontrovertible proof that the child was capable of putting together complex problems together. The child looked up at him, and then back down to the picture, and touched the image of five year old Sasuke sitting in Itachi's lap before craning his neck back up to Sasuke, his eyes questioning. Sasuke couldn't breathe.

"Yes," he said, his voice croaking and forgetting that the boy couldn't hear, couldn't understand him at all. "That's me. And that's your father, Itachi. We were brothers."

The boy watched him carefully for a moment, and then blinked rapidly as the anesthetic started to wear off. Before it wore off completely he broke the seal on the medicine chest and took out the boy's special medicated gummy bears, specially formulated when he realized that the child was having difficulty swallowing his medicine. Even so the boy grimaced, although he obediently ate the medicated candy. If he was as intelligent as Sasuke was beginning to think he was, he likely knew that the candy had medicine in it, and probably didn't like being drugged. But his eyes hurt too much otherwise. Sasuke silently promised that in a few days he would let the boy chose whether he wanted the medicine or not. When his eyes were better healed.


Explanation, Tachi (the boy) is deaf and has infected eyes (largely based on my eye issues earlier this year, OMG I didn't a little pinprick hurts sooo much!) Also he was starved. And probably abused, although we don't know how yet (ie I haven't decided).

So yeah.