Finding Home

Authors: KeairaxSeiaa & Wasurenaikara
Title: Finding Home
Warnings: Boy-love, brotherly love, spoilers up to the recent manga chapters involving the Uchiha, non-con, angst.
Rating: NC-17 (by chapter two)
Characters: Primarily Sasuke and Itachi.
Pairings: Mainly SasuIta with eventual ItaSasu. This is not your usual Uchihacest fic. If you are looking for good, ol' fashioned ItaSasu, please try our other work, Dance With the Devil.
Summary: Sasuke has grown up knowing the truth about the clan massacre, but nothing has been made better for it. Rather than abandoning the village, Itachi has spent the last eight years of his life in ANBU. When he is suddenly discharged, he and Sasuke are forced to pick up life where they left off, but nothing is the same anymore. This is a story of the fine line between love and hate, of atonement, and of desperately trying to find your way back home.

Finding Home

Chapter One: Welcome Home


I know things that you don't.
I've done things that you won't.
There's nothing like a trail of blood
to find your way back home.

- Life is Beautiful, Sixx A.M.


The sunlight that hit Itachi's face as he stepped out of the ANBU barracks for the last time took his eyes a moment to adjust to. It felt, to him, a little bit like getting out of prison. For the last eight years of his life, he had served his time. Cut off from the entire rest of the village, no contact to anyone outside the few tormented souls housed in the barracks with him. Spending more time abroad than home. It was all a dark blur to him now, of blood and grass that was slick with it. Of the stench of burning flesh and cold interrogation rooms and how much a person could take before he finally died. All the memories were tangled in one another as a nearly indistinguishable web of agony and torment that somehow made up the last decade of his life. There was no beginning or end to his recollection of it, no discernible chronological order. Just tragedy that led into tragedy that fed into pain that seared into him until he was numb.

Standing where he was on the street, looking back at the stairway that led into the dark underground living quarters of ANBU's Root division, Itachi realized he had a fair grasp of what Hell must feel like. Two thousand, eight hundred and fifty-six days. Ninety-three months. Eight years. Those numbers meant nothing to Itachi anymore. They felt like the blink of an eye. They felt like an eternity. All that kept him grounded to the reality of the passing of time was all he had left in the world.

Sasuke.

Sasuke was... Itachi shut his eyes, turning away from the barracks again so that he focus his thoughts. Through the haze of battle-smoke and the sharp crack of thunder jutsu and upturned earth and the quiet, still night brightly illuminated by the moon and Mother's tears reflecting in the cold moonlight--

Sasuke was sixteen now, that was right, going on seventeen. And Itachi was...

Twenty-one. Twenty-two come next June.

It had been over four years since Itachi was last given a photo of his brother, because at twelve Sasuke had graduated from the Academy and no more pictures were taken. At least, none that reached him. He had no idea what Sasuke even looked like now. How was he supposed to do this...?

He glanced down at the discharge notice in his hands, ordering him to return to normal Jounin duties. It also informed him that he was assigned to live at his old house in the Uchiha district, and that his remaining kin would be waiting for him.

Itachi knew his only remaining kin was Sasuke. Danzou, who had signed off on his dispatch notice, knew that his only remaining kin was Sasuke. It was a cruel distinction to make, but Itachi was long used to the idea that Danzou was a deeply sadistic man.

Sighing, Itachi slipped the notice back into his pocket, bringing out instead the oldest photo he owned. Its corners had been completely worn down to curves and it was crinkled in some places and water damaged in others. The colors were long faded. Still, the cherub-like face of an unsmiling boy could be made out on the front, and on the back the photo was carefully labeled 'Sasuke, age eight'. Swallowing, Itachi pressed his lips against the worn surface of the photo and held it hidden in his palm as he continued down the path.

He was going home.

Eight years in ANBU, and now it seemed his atonement was only just beginning.

The house had been cleaned - almost obsessively - to perfection. A room, his old room, had been prepared: fresh sheets and pillowcases, clothes a bit bigger than his own in the dresser. Everything was ready.

With nothing else to do but wait, Sasuke sat on the couch and did just that, staring down at the notice which had been delivered to him early that morning. He'd been hoping it was a new mission; he needed to log more if he wanted a chance at ANBU.

Uchiha Itachi. Discharged.

Lots of words, but only three that mattered. And they were to live together. It wasn't an order, obviously, but it was worded like one. Where else should Itachi have gone, anyway? As the eldest son, the house was actually his, not Sasuke's. If anyone were to live here alone, it would be the older Uchiha. Sasuke would have to go elsewhere, not Itachi.

One would have thought that murder would negate Itachi's rights to his inheritance.

Sasuke set the letter aside before his shaking hands ripped it. He knew the truth behind what had happened, and Itachi wasn't to blame. He'd done his job, that was all. Sasuke was lucky he had been allowed to remain alive. He should be grateful to his brother.

He stood sharply and began pacing. Grateful...

Turning that last corner had been the hardest for Itachi. It felt a bit like facing the edge of a cliff. He wanted to go, so badly. He knew it was wrong for him to want to go. He knew nothing good waited at the end. He was afraid. But he wanted to see Sasuke again so badly.

In Root, there was no soldier more notorious than Uchiha Itachi. They teased him, called him the Ice Queen because the thought of him, the memory of him kept them up at night and belittling him made them feel better enough to sleep. There was no one who killed more swiftly, who interrogated more efficiently, who came back from being held by the enemy more impassively. As far as they could tell, Itachi feared nothing and felt nothing. He wore the same expression always, the same blank mask that housed the eyes of a murderer. He was Danzou's pet assassin.

Now, standing here, the unmovable Uchiha Itachi was petrified. Just beyond this wall, everything had happened. His entire life up to this point felt distant, as though all the terrible things had happened to someone else and he had merely been an unwilling spectator.

In a way, it was true. Danzou had been pulling on his puppet strings for so long that Itachi barely knew which way was up anymore.

Taking in a deep breath, Itachi shifted the weight of the small bag slung over his shoulder and pushed open the gates, very slowly taking the surprisingly familiar road that led back home. It was a little frightening how easily this all came back to him.

Eight years, and it almost felt as though he had never left.

Coming up on the porch of his old house, Itachi knew that the illusion of familiarity would be shattered soon. That Sasuke was a different person now from who he remembered. But it was so easy to forget just then. That he wasn't thirteen. That Mother wouldn't be in the kitchen. That Sasuke didn't care about him anymore.

Swallowing, he let himself in. He had no time to indulge in those kinds of fantasies. He wasn't here for himself. He was here because this was what he needed to do.

Sasuke heard the front door slide open and stopped in his pacing. Slow footsteps, Itachi's footsteps. He turned to face the doorway leading into the living room, a million thoughts running through his mind.

What would Itachi look like, now? What would they say to each other? How could he possibly face his brother, look him in the eyes, knowing what he had done?

He had seen Itachi, that night. The memory of his brother, his eyes cold, blood dripping from the end of his sword. That image of Itachi had forced all others from Sasuke's mind, and for just a moment he was that little boy again, and it was that Itachi who was going to step through the doorway.

However, the Itachi who he expected to walk in was far from the soul who actually did. The years in ANBU had taken their toll on the elder brother, after all. His hair had grown longer as most days Itachi had been too distracted to give it much thought. It was all the way down his back now, bound tight at a ponytail at the base of his skull. He was thinner than he used to be, all muscle, skin, and bone. Living off of soldier's rations were partially to blame, and time spent in captivity beyond enemy lines had done the rest. The way he carried himself was different too. He was no longer the proud eldest of the family, Sasuke's infallible older brother. He was a veteran of war, slouched and world-weary and defeated.

He had endured a little more than his mind could handle and it clearly showed, but he had always stubbornly survived whatever his career in Root threw at him. Because he had to. Because he was all Sasuke had left of his family, and only Sasuke was allowed to take his life. No one in the world was allowed to take anything more from Sasuke. And so Itachi had survived.

Itachi had not known what to expect of their reunion either. Of what to do or say or how either of them would react. It was hard not to imagine their parents' bodies between them. Fugaku's voice was nearly always there, whispering in his ear. What a failure of a son he had been. Cursing him. Cursing ever having given him life. When Fugaku was not hissing poison to him, there was silence. Complete and utter silence. It was a specific silence, one that Itachi found very distinct and unmistakable.

It was the silence of his mother's tears. Of Mikoto sobbing without making a sound, her shoulders just barely trembling.

He always preferred Fugaku's voice to that.

Seeing Sasuke again was different from all the ways he had ever imagined, though. He had always been determined to see Sasuke again on Sasuke's terms. Let Sasuke have the first word. Wait for Sasuke to react before deciding anything.

None of that happened. The moment his eyes settled on Sasuke, he was filled with a strange, tense sort of relief. A smile he knew he did not deserve touched his lips despite his best efforts to hold it back.

"You've grown so much taller," he murmured, somehow unable to stop the words either. He had missed Sasuke so much, more than he had even realized until this moment.

Sasuke couldn't look at his brother's smile. He kept his chin held high, but averted his gaze.

He had indeed grown taller; he now stood almost even with his brother. He wore a standard green jounin vest and black pants. His feet were bare, and made no sound on the floor as he took an impulsive step forward. "You..."

Sasuke shook his head. Stick to something safe. "I fixed up your room. Everything you need should be there, but we can make a trip into the village for whatever might be missing."

Normal. If he pretended like everything was normal, then it almost... almost... was. Except for that sickening, rolling hatred in the pit of his stomach.

"Th..thank you," Itachi managed to say, glancing up the stairs in the direction of his room. The house seemed to small and empty. Itachi remembered it being so much bigger, but...

He had been much younger when he last stepped foot in here.

"I should go unpack, I, um..." Itachi faltered, gaze drawn inexorably to Sasuke again. It was next to impossible for Itachi to stop staring. At how much Sasuke had grown, matured. At how much he took after their mother. At how sharp he looked in his Jounin uniform, how strong and healthy he had turned out to be.

"Do you know what you're doing for dinner?" he brought up instead, falling back on their mother's favorite choice of topic whenever a tumult broke out within the family, mostly between her husband and her eldest son. He supposed he was the head of household now and should try to act like it, though he wasn't sure if Sasuke would be willing to let him.

Sasuke was a bit surprised by the question. "I hadn't thought about it," he said. He really hadn't - he'd been too busy cleaning up and fixing Itachi's room. He'd focused all of his attention on getting things ready for his brother's arrival, on how he would react upon seeing his brother. It had never crossed his mind that life would go on after the moment at which he and Itachi met again.

"Is there anything specific that you want?"

"...nothing comes to mind," Itachi answered after a long moment's pause. He had been so busy trying to survive the last eight years of his life that the reminder that things existed like food that had texture and taste felt a little bit abrupt. "I could go pick something up for us? What do you like?"

The question made him a little sad to ask. There had been a time in his life when he would never have had to. It only served as yet another reminder of how completely he had failed Sasuke as a brother.

Sasuke shrugged. "Tomatoes."

The word was out of his mouth, embarrassing him, before he had a chance to stop it. "We can go together. You just got out, you shouldn't go by yourself." Itachi was, of course, perfectly capable of going out by himself. Sasuke thought, rather bitterly, that if Itachi could kill the entire Uchiha clan, he could certainly go grocery shopping. But it just seemed... appropriate not to expect him to do it alone when he'd just gotten back, and Sasuke was desperately trying not to show any sign of anger or blame.

"You still like tomatoes?" Itachi sounded startled but relieved all at once. And Sasuke didn't seem to be avoiding him, which was more courtesy than he found himself deserving of but admittedly nice. "I'll just go put this away, then." A little awkwardly, Itachi excused himself and took the stairs back up to his old room, stepping into it with some hesitance. He set his bag down by the door, walking over to his bed. It, too, looked smaller than he remembered, but he was sure it would suit him just fine even now. In contrast to what he had grown accustomed of sleeping on, it looked very, very inviting just then.

He briefly glanced through the contents of his closet before exiting again, not wanting to keep Sasuke waiting as he headed back down the stairs, a mixed, guilty sort of expression on his face.

"Thank you," he mumbled a little sheepishly, having noticed how much work had been put into preparing his room. "Everything looks great. You... You didn't have to go through all that trouble for me. I'm--" Itachi cleared his throat then, suddenly unable to speak his words.

I'm your aniki, after all.

"...I should be looking after you, after all."

A soft, almost derisive sound passed Sasuke's lips before he could stop it, and he cleared his throat in an attempt to hide it. "It seemed like the thing to do," he said. "And it wasn't much trouble. The room needed to be cleaned, anyway."

He had avoided it for years, now. Hadn't even opened the door. Forcing himself to go in there and fix it up had been a test, of sorts. If he couldn't even do that, there was no way he would be able to keep his composure when Itachi got back. But he'd managed it, and now he was facing his brother with barely a slip.

Catching the contempt, Itachi cringed a little, then found himself smiling rather self-depreciatively against his will as he glanced quickly away, hands curling around the cuffs of his sleeves.

"...it's okay, you know," he mumbled, grimacing at himself all the while, "to be mad at me. I didn't come expecting to be forgiven or anything. You don't have to hold back."

Sasuke shook his head. He didn't want to talk about it, didn't want to think about it. Because acknowledging his anger with Itachi would mean acknowledging what had happened, talking about it and dealing with it, and he couldn't do that. The only way this could ever work was if he pretended it had never happened, and that required that he treat Itachi as if nothing had happened. Which meant he couldn't be angry with him.

"There's nothing to forgive. I'm not mad. Do you want to go get something to eat?"

"Sure," Itachi answered, voice catching only a little as he turned for the door, opening it again. "How about a restaurant? I'm afraid a tour in ANBU did very little for my cooking abilities." Almost immediately, he found himself adopting the approach Sasuke seemed to want. Deep inside, he felt heavy. Weighed down. He wanted Sasuke to blame him, to hate him, to take out all that pain he knew Sasuke bottled deep inside on him. But if Sasuke was determined not to deal with it, that was his prerogative.

Sasuke followed Itachi outside, sliding his sandals on on his way out. "Okay. Where do you want to go?" It was surreal how positively normal they seemed. Things had changed, of course, because they were no longer children. But looking at them, they seemed just like two brothers going out for a meal. One might never guess what was going on beneath the surface. "I'm up for anything but ramen."

"Did ramen do something to offend you?" Itachi inquired, if for no reason other than to get to know Sasuke again. He waited for Sasuke to catch up in the street, then headed in the direction of the exit that led into Konoha's business and entertainment district. "I'm not quite sure where anything is anymore, so you'll have to lead the way but I'm fine... anything, really. The only thing I have anything against ever eating again is cafeteria food, and possibly hospital food. I swear to God that hospital food is a trial by fire, to see if you deserve to walk out again."

Sasuke allowed a slight chuckle as he caught up with his brother, shoving his hands into his pockets once he was even with Itachi and walking at a slower pace. "My former teammate had an obsession with ramen, so I spent most of my younger years eating it much more frequently than I would have liked." He shrugged his shoulders in an expression vaguely similar to Kakashi. "I avoid it now."

"Ahhh, I see. Shisui was rather like that for me," Itachi offered, wondering if it was in poor taste to mention his slaughtered best friend. He liked to talk about Shisui, though, he'd liked it even back in ANBU. He felt he owed Shisui as at least not to forget him. "Only he liked instant curry. It was appalling. He would hide packages of it in his shirt, and if we were on a mission and away from fresh rice, he would just eat the powder out of the package. I swear someone in middle management puts the teams together like that on purpose."

Sasuke grew a bit more uncomfortable (if that were even possible) at the mention of Shisui, but he took it in stride. "They must. Naruto used to do something very similar with instant ramen on missions."

The staring started almost immediately after they had left the deserted Uchiha compound. Sasuke had, at least, been prepared for it. He'd heard the whispers behind his back, and there were always those who decided that it was their job to tell Sasuke what a 'hero' his brother was. Giving his life to ANBU so soon after the death of his family.

Sasuke's fists clenched.

Itachi, on the other hand, had not expected the kind of reception he received at all. Even with all the self control he possessed, he was unable to keep the shock from registering on his face as he was regarded kindly by the passing villagers. Warmly, even. But of course. They had no idea. Only Sasuke knew the truth of what he had done.

It seemed Danzou had kept at least one of the many promises that he had made to Itachi. Of course it would be the one that cut him the deepest to see. It seemed all very, very fitting somehow, and Itachi ducked his head. He didn't want this. He didn't deserve it, and what they were doing would only make things harder for Sasuke.

"Let's--" He took a deep breath to steady his voice. "Let's take the alley, shall we?"

Sasuke looked at his brother in slight surprise. If anything, he'd expected Itachi to bask in the praise. But, then, that was the image of the murderer he'd built up in his mind, not of the Itachi that he'd known as a child. His brother had never liked attention despite the fact that even back then, he had gotten a lot of it.

"Alright," Sasuke agreed, steering them into the alley before speaking again. "You didn't know they all spoke of you that way?"

"No," Itachi admitted, voice a little quiet as he followed Sasuke into the alley. The troubled look on his face smoothed out again once they were alone. He had hoped that being in public would ease some of the tension between them, but it appeared there would be no escaping the past.

"I haven't had any contact with the village since I was drafted. My squad in ANBU was highly secretive. We had the highest level of security clearance, but we weren't allowed to talk to anyone but each other and the elders."

Sasuke nodded in understanding. He'd been told, as a child, that his brother was so deeply involved in ANBU that they would be allowed no contact with each other for years. Sasuke thought, many times, that if he had been able to see his brother after the massacre, things might have been better for the two of them; their relationship might have been salvaged.

Instead, however, for years the last time Sasuke had seen his brother was as he stood over the dead bodies of their parents. It had, eventually, overcome every good memory Sasuke had with Itachi and remained his only clear recollection of his brother.

"I see." Sasuke kicked a rock at his feet. "They've been saying it for years. What a hero you are."

"It doesn't matter," Itachi murmured, glancing away as they continued walking. Vaguely, he was aware that they hadn't even decided where to go yet. It probably didn't matter. Somewhere along the line, they would see something and perhaps even go in. Itachi could only hope that wherever they ended up served drinks. "They're wrong. I've discovered the village's definition for 'hero' is revoltingly off-kilter anyway."

Danzou often told him what a hero he was in that greasy way that Danzou seemed to do everything. It made Itachi feel filthy, inside and out. The first thing he usually did after meeting with Danzou was take a long shower.

Slaughter your family. It will save the village and you will be a hero.

Assassinate this daimyou's daughter. It will prevent her from marrying the son of that daimyou, forming a dangerous alliance. In about fifteen years.

Oh, did I forget to mention she was only three? My mistake. Nonetheless, look at all the good you've done. You're a hero among heroes, Itachi.

"I've known that for a long time," Sasuke murmured, allowing just the slightest bit of his anger to slip through his mask before burying it all again. "No reason worrying about it. We'll both get used to the way they act around you eventually. And with time it won't be such a big deal when you go out." He lifted his gaze from the ground, glancing at a nearby restaurant. "Want to go there? It's not as popular as some of the others, so we shouldn't run into too many people."

"That sounds fine," Itachi agreed quickly, eager to get right back out of society now that he had been reminded of why he had hated being in it to begin with. Now that the destination had been pointed out to him, he led the way a half pace in front of Sasuke. Once inside, he had them seated in a far, out of sight corner, and immediately ordered himself a bottle of warm sake, the most expensive that the restaurant carried. It wasn't as though he hadn't just come out of living in seclusion, making eight years of hazard pay without spending a cent of it on anything at all. And then there was the matter of being the sole heir of all of the assets of his entire clan.

Briefly, he humored the image of repopulating the Uchiha district with cats, then realized what he was doing and quietly prayed that the alcohol would arrive soon. He couldn't be sure, but sometimes he had the nagging feeling that he was actually clinically insane. Sometimes he wondered if the fleeting thoughts of repopulating the Uchiha district with cats or whether or not Sasuke (age eight) would have looked good in ducky pajamas were actually the only sane thoughts he ever had, and that he spent most of his time rightly out of his mind.

When he really got to thinking about it, ducky pajamas and cats were quite a bit more sane than garroting three-year-olds with thin wire or burning rural villages to the ground or tying up his own mother and slitting her neck from ear to ear. Most of the time, Itachi simply tried very hard not to think about it.

Maybe he should have asked for the sake cold. Warming it was going to take extra time.

Sasuke sat across from his brother, watching him. He wondered what was going through Itachi's mind, what those slight changes in expression meant. How did one read a murderer? As a ninja, Sasuke had done some things he wasn't proud of, especially since becoming a Jounin. Many of them involving Naruto and a complete loss of his dignity. But nothing compared to what Itachi had done.

Luckily, the sake that Itachi had ordered was brought out relatively quickly. Sasuke usually avoided drinking (a reaction related to the aforementioned things he wasn't proud of involving Naruto), but a drink sounded incredibly good, considering the circumstances. "I want some."

There was a brief moment of internal conflict in Itachi as he considered how he felt about his baby brother drinking, and then he reminded himself that it didn't matter. Sasuke was sitting across the table, about to share dinner with the man who had betrayed his trust and murdered their entire family. If either of them was entitled to a drink, it was Sasuke.

Wordlessly, Itachi took the small sake bottle in hand and poured Sasuke a cup before filling his own. After he set the bottle down again, he raised his cup to Sasuke, smiled tightly, and then knocked the contents back before he promptly poured himself a second helping.

Sasuke did the same, tilting his head back and emptying the small cup before setting it back down, indicating that Itachi refill it.

Feeling only very slightly like Sasuke's wife, Itachi dutifully refilled his brother's cup, signaling to the waiter that they apparently would be needing another bottle fairly soon.

"Do you normally drink this much?" he inquired out of curiosity, wondering how Sasuke held his liquor.

Sasuke again emptied his glass before answering. "Hardly ever," he answered. "I had too much at a party my teammate threw after we became Chuunin and... I just don't drink much anymore." He wrinkled his nose at the memory. "Do you?"

"Sobriety is generally synonymous with 'the time I spend running missions'," Itachi replied with a slight shrug. It was practically the mantra of anyone who worked for ANBU, even those in the general forces. "I could probably stop doing that now that I've been discharged, though," he added, in case Sasuke didn't feel like living with a near alcoholic.

"No." Sasuke shook his head. "Don't feel obligated to make any allowances for me, and I'll do the same for you." He didn't want to feel obligated to change his life to suit Itachi, and he doubted Itachi wanted to do so for him. They would just have to learn to live together. He would begin to worry when and if whatever amount of alcohol Itachi drank seemed to be causing him some sort of harm. Until then, it was none of Sasuke's business.

"Fair enough." Itachi was surprised at Sasuke's level of maturity and it showed a little in his voice. He filled Sasuke's cup again, this time without prompting, before emptying the first bottle into his own. He drank that down too, feeling the pleasant warmth fill him. "Did anything in interest happen at this party to turn you off drinking...?"

After the question was spoken, Itachi had to take a moment to frown at his empty cup. Was the sake loosening his tongue already? What a question to ask.

Sasuke was a bit surprised by the question. It was a moment before he responded. "I made a mistake with a friend," he said, then downed his drink again. He really, really didn't want to think about that. Naruto made 'subtle' attempts at bringing it up often enough as it was.

"A... mistake?" Itachi repeated, mind blanking because it refused to quite supply what Sasuke seemed to be hinting at. Itachi was still getting used to his brother suddenly being sixteen. Trying to wrap his head around everything else that came with being sixteen would take some time yet.

Sasuke set his chin in his hand, his head already beginning to feel a bit fuzzy. "Yeah." He let out a breath as the food they'd ordered was brought out. "Looks good."

"It looks... edible," Itachi commented, sufficiently distracted from Sasuke's drunken expeditions though it remained nagging at him in the back of his mind. He barely noticed. His mindscape was such a landfill of thoughts that a few more were more like nice neighbors than anything else. "It's been a while. The joke around the compound was always that if someone was particularly stubborn in interrogation, to take him off prisoner's rations and feed him the stuff the night shift in our cafeteria dreamed up." Itachi paused just then, feeling a little strange to talk about the grittier side of his work, jokingly or not. He was sure Sasuke was already aware of what ANBU did any beyond that, he was sure that no cruelty from him would surprise Sasuke anymore, but...

Still, it was strange. He kept forgetting that Sasuke was grown now.

He took a bite of his katsu-don, having ordered it because it was a comfort food for him, and thoughtfully chewed. It tasted every bit as good as he had always imagined it would, but somehow it was not as fulfilling as he had expected it to be.

Sasuke nodded, picking at his own food. "That bad? I'm trying to join ANBU. I haven't completed enough higher-ranked missions yet, but I'm working on it." Maybe something good could come out of this, at least. It was difficult to get information on ANBU, even on the requirements to be considered for an invitation to join. All he knew, at the moment, was that he basically hadn't logged enough hours yet. Itachi could give him more information - what he was allowed to divulge, at least.

"Trying to join--" Itachi wasn't sure what happened next, only that a rush of anxiety flooded to his chest and the next thing he knew, there was the sound of glass breaking. Somewhere between attempting to speak and hearing the sound of glass breaking, there was Tetsuya lying three feet away from him, dying slowly from the infection in his leg as he sobbed for his mother and Itachi shackled to the floor, arm broken in three places, without a mother to cry for. There was the Kusa nin driving needles into his eyes, pressing against his optic nerves, trying to wrestle the secret of the Sharingan from him, and there were the men who raped his vice captain to get him to talk and then killed her when he wouldn't.

Itachi blinked away the visions, heart hammering desperately in his chest. He came to realize that his hands were shaking and he pulled them into his lap, clenching them into fists as he tried to find breath enough to speak with. "W..why would you want... Why would you want to enlist in...?"

Sasuke stared at his brother, not sure what to make of his reaction. The broken shards of his glass were still on the table, a few of them tinged with blood. "You... are your hands alright?" he asked, forgetting Itachi's question and leaning closer in an attempt to see his brother's hands.

"My hands--?" Itachi looked down, then scowled at the barely mentionable cuts. "Forget about that, Sasuke!" he snapped, his blind panic taking shape in anger because it was all he could think to express. He wasn't even angry at Sasuke as much as the world in general. He understood now, why Danzou had him discharged. His eyes weren't getting any better and his success rate had dropped significantly this last year. If Danzou knew Sasuke had interest in joining ANBU, then-- It was entirely possible that he would have Sasuke pushed right into Root.

That couldn't happen.

There was just-- There was too much. If Sasuke ended up there, Itachi would never be able to forgive himself for not taking Sasuke out of this world when he had been presented with the chance. Itachi had met so many things crueler than death, and nearly all of them had everything to do with his time spent in Root.

"Are you out of your mind? Why would you want to enlist? What could possibly be there for you? No one is forcing you, you don't need the money, you can't... you can't want it for the sport of it, so--" There were legitimate reasons for enlisting in ANBU. Itachi had been half drafted, half pressured into it by his father. Some of his old, long-dead friends had joined because they had families to support. Some of the ANBU he had met just wanted the license to torture and kill. None of that fit Sasuke. Even if any of it had, there was still no way Itachi could allow it. He would reenlist himself before he let Sasuke enter that world.

Sasuke frowned at his brother, unable to understand the sudden change in attitude. Since their reunion, he had been withdrawn, almost cautious, but suddenly he was being very forceful. "Achieving ANBU is like... recognition of your skills," Sasuke said. "I want to be good enough to be accepted. Besides, serving in ANBU would be an honor."

"There is no honor to be found in ANBU, Sasuke," Itachi warned sternly, struggling to keep his voice steady. He dug his nails into his palms, trying to calm himself with little success. How could Sasuke be so mistaken? Even outside of Root, there were times when Itachi, much younger then, had woken up sobbing from the nightmares his missions gave him, and all that got him to sleep again was curling up on the floor of Sasuke's room to listen to the sound of his brother's breathing. He had always been careful to be gone before daybreak, though that seemed to be a mistake now.

"ANBU is where you go when you have nowhere else to turn. You have to be strong, it's true, but the people in ANBU are strong because they're backed into a corner. It has nothing to do with skill and everything to do with desperation. It's not right for you."

Sasuke's dark eyes narrowed angrily. "You don't think I can handle it, do you?" he asked, keeping his voice low, words a bit slurred from the sake. "I can do anything you can do, Itachi, and I'll do it better, too."

Who was Itachi, to tell him what he could and could not do? Itachi had abandoned him, left him to fend for himself, and now he thought he had any right to pretend to tell Sasuke what was 'right' for him?

"You don't know anything about me," Sasuke continued firmly.

"And you don't know anything about me, or anything about what you're trying to get yourself into!" Being a habitual drinker, Itachi didn't even feel what sake he'd had, though that said nothing about the rationality of his current state of mind. Swallowing thickly, he had their dinners packed for them to go, paid hastily, and all but forced Sasuke out the front door. He was completely oblivious to the stares they were being given. It was inconsequential. Nothing mattered except putting sense into his brother again, before Danzou sank his claws in deep and turned his brother into a plaything to use until he broke and then discarded him.

"We're going home."