The Stage's Avenger

A/N: Hello people! Those of you noticing my delay with Found You, don’t be discouraged. I’m not scrapping the project. I just needed something new to occupy myself. And can’t resist Uchihacest.

To those of you new to my work, I hope you enjoy it. And encourage you to read my Kakashi/Sasuke fic, Found You.

For those of you not looking for straight-up Uchihacest and all the unreal pairings you would never see in a canon fic, I apologize.

There will be NO LEMON in this chapter.

I wanted to put it in. But I realized, that Sasuke having flashbacks each and every chapter was far more effective, and will keep the smut fresh.

Background/Setting: Sasuke attends a year-round prep school and is currently turning thirteen. Itachi, eighteen, is undergoing training by their father to go in to the police academy. Much of this world is going to be like the Naruto-verse, in the names of cities and the general placement of the countries – the only real big difference is that there’s NO NINJAS. No chakra and no Hokages and so forth.

Akatsuki is an organization attempting to overthrow the Yakuza, and Fugaku (Sasuke’s father) is captain of the Konoha Police force currently investigating them.

Disclaimer: Peaches does not own Naruto. Kishimoto-sensei owns Naruto. Peaches makes no money being a filthy pervert and exploiter of Uchihas, a creation of Kishimoto-sensei. Peaches has taken his perfectly good characters hostage for Peaches’s own personal (and sexually egocentric) satisfaction and plotline idea. Peaches is God – but Kishimoto-sensei is God’s God.

Lo~! Thy will be done! And Peaches said, “Let their be cest of every Uchiha”, and Peaches saw that it was good.

The Stage’s Avenger
by Peaches

Chapter One

A lone, strong finger crossed his lips in a hushing gesture. Eyes lilted heavily in their lashes, inky pools alight with mischief.

“If he hears you, it’ll ruin the surprise…” His voice was so gentle and serene, commanding and promising a surreal agony to come if they made a single peep. When he received only terrified, angry glares he let go an amused breath that bowed his shoulders, giving them a tender smile. “So long as we understand each other.”

Through the hall he heard the back door close. Now, his baby brother would spend precisely four minutes in the kitchen getting out of his school things and getting the afternoon snack that was always in the fridge. He would then go upstairs, set out his homework, watch the afternoon news, and work on his assignments until the smell of dinner rolled around.

His baby brother, so predictable and mundane. So boring. So dainty and perfectly boring.

Footsteps were muffled by the closed door, their parents’ door always closed. And so as not to arouse his brother’s suspicions prematurely, Itachi had left it closed for the ordeal.

There were still scratches on his arms, and a long one on his cheek from when he had cornered their mother in the kitchen.

Admittedly, it had been unwise to go after a police chief’s wife while she was holding a knife. A quick visit to the sink had erased the traces of struggle, and while he had waited for their father to come home he had made his brother’s snack.

A half-order of celery and a peanut butter sandwich. Disgustingly ordinary.

And it was because his brother always made light of what could be noble ambitions – because his brother was as ordinary as his blue-black hair and coal black eyes…

It was because of Itachi all of that was to blame. He could not put it elsewhere. Perhaps the boy sounded, looked, acted so ordinary because he was doing everything Itachi himself was used to doing. Since it was nothing new to him, of course Sasuke wasn’t very surprising.

…He had eaten the other half of the sandwich and rib of celery. It had to go somewhere.

Itachi got to his feet and slid the door shut, prowling soundlessly across the carpet, the smallest wince made from the sting in his side. Trapping his father in the living room had been almost downright crazy. He had gotten a baton in the ribs shortly before getting to the cable ties.

And now, in their own closet, their parents were gagged and bound and out of sight, a prelude and the best seat in the house for the symphony to come. He shivered at every creak in the floorboards that announced his way to the second floor.

Sasuke never made an attempt to be his own person. For all intents the elder Uchiha brother was pestered by this clinging shadow that he very well knew could be its own shining, brilliant and desirable entity.

All he needed was a… push in the right direction. Something to distinguish the two of them in the eyes of everyone.

And, as his brother, it was almost Itachi’s duty to make sure his baby brother got pushed in the right direction.

Anticipation warmed his blood and he was tipsy by the time he reached the top of the stairs. Images of what was to come floated through his mind and maybe even through the wall as he leaned his head against it for momentary support. Collecting enough of his frigid, detached self he sauntered in to the doorway of his little brother’s room.

Behind him, across the hall, was his own room wherein lied few possessions and worldly things that denoted his personality. And in some attempt to mimic him, Sasuke’s room too was bare. No portraits of friends from his school, nor accomplishment ribbons. Not even a family photograph on the desk the youth was hunched over.

Itachi admired the translucent quality of his brother’s white uniform shirt. The way the light perspiration of walking home made much paler skin glow.

And turn a pale red as the smaller hairs on the back of his neck prickled for at last noticing the intent gaze there. Or at least something itching. Maybe the tag of his shirt, and at the idea he lifted his hand to inspect.

For all the time it had taken, the older brother had already closed in. Little fingers that he caught in his own twitched and the entire body in the chair went rigid. Satiny strands whipped about his cherubic, heart-shaped face and large eyes lit up with the image that greeted them.

“Niisan! You scared the shit out of me.”

That was something that definitely separated the two of them. Sasuke had a role-model, where Itachi had none. Nor did he particularly enjoy being one.

But he could admire. And he had done a lot of that in the recent years, the way his brother developed. It was nothing to be envious about, but he certainly bore an appreciation for it. For how much Sasuke looked like their sweet mother. And how just a while ago he had duct-taped a pair of petal-soft lips like them. Now he wondered if the boy would give him the same horrific expression their mother did for such an atrocity.

As much as Sasuke was surprised to see his brother in his room, he wasn’t at all taken aback by the flat, even somber expression his brother always wore. What made his eyes pull wide though was…

Itachi blinked as the smaller boy tried to explode off his chair, soundly restrained by the fist in the back of his shirt.

“Niisan? What happened to your cheek!”

His heart skipped ahead for an excuse as he smoothly murmured, “Paper cut.” Eyes quickly fled to the stack of papers that were scattered on the desk. “What do you have for homework?”

It wouldn’t do, if his brother fell behind in school due to his plans.

His brother, their father’s favorite… was taking an interest in him. It wasn’t common, and Sasuke was not about to go investigating a paper cut over the chance to impress this guy that he admired most.

There was such an enormous gap between them. Itachi had already graduated from college by the time Sasuke was finishing primary school. That meant the other had so much time on his hands and filled it with their father’s schedule of police tactics and drills to (no doubt) qualify for the academy. When it wasn’t that, he was reading books that now Sasuke had smuggled in to his personal library on the stout shelf near his bed.

Meanwhile, Sasuke struggled to prove he was good enough to skip grades and take college courses. He ultimately spent a great deal of time stressing over things his peers wouldn’t be thinking about for another few years.

It also meant that because their father was so absorbed in turning his brother in to an elite example of the Uchiha name to function in protective society, the only person that the smaller brother could regularly commune with was their mother. Ever since he had heard the title ‘momma’s boy’ he had… ceased being so excited by his conversations with her.

Flipping through a few papers, he spotted the headline. “Trigonomic functions and…” Another few papers. Sometimes he didn’t know what the teachers he never met were assigning him until he got home, like now. “And identifying isotopes.”

For a moment he felt nostalgic, hearing those topics of academic necessity that had… no place in the real world.

No real world Sasuke seemed to want to be part of, anyway. Itachi certainly didn’t use it in his world.

What he did use were his fingers currently kneading his presence in to the back of a pre-teen neck. In gratitude there was a low noise from his little brother, seating his sore eyes in the heels of his palms.

“I thought you did that stuff last week?” He could feel the way cells burned with embarrassment under his massage. No doubt, Sasuke had expected he wasn’t paying attention when he had asked the question last week. And the week before that.

And every week ever since he came home from his first day of school.

“Take-home test…”

“Aa.” That made all the sense in the world.

Sasuke lifted his head from his hands, but not so far as to impede the care being given to his muscles. “Hey, did Kaasan go to the store?”

His brother’s predictability to ask such relevant questions tingled the corners of his lips with the idea of smiling. It didn’t happen, but he felt like it.

He had been working on the story for days. If not weeks. Fingers slipped away from the thin pillar of muscle supporting his brother’s dazzling spectrum of expression so he could seat himself on the edge of the desk. Arms folded as he loomed over his brother with a critical gaze, one he was proud that the boy caught immediately.

“Dad came home early to take her to a matinee before dinner.” School-frayed muscles were no longer in his grasp but he could see the quiver of delight at the news, in turn making him smirk as he pretended to stare out the window. “They figured you were getting too big for a birthday party with them around. So, you better consider it my birthday present to you, agreeing to keep an eye on you and make sure the house stays in one piece, brat.”

He blinked slowly at detecting the way his brother sagged in the chair, caught the way a finger numbly played with his mechanical pencil.

“I didn’t really want a party…”

“Ah. You’ve still got that fan club…” As much as he had meant it to be a question, it didn’t really need confirmation.

“They’re so annoying… I’m all they think about.”

“You’re annoying. I’m all you think about.” Itachi chuckled, but when his brother didn’t swat at him or squawk, he lifted his fingers.

“…Father doesn’t think about anything except you, either.”

He could delay his plans, to appease his brother’s worries. Socks treaded the carpet until he sat himself on the end of the bed, patting the open span of comforter beside him. Sasuke really was too loyal for his own good. Even when he sulked and glumly looked over with those pathetic, pouting large inky eyes of his, he obeyed and rose from the chair to join him.

The younger brother flopped to the mattress and stretched out to stare at the ceiling as the older chuckled. Much, much too loyal, even to his unspoken beckons.

Itachi gave an assuring pat to a knee exposed by the low hang of navy shorts. “You can’t really expect him to recognize you for being exactly like me, can you? You’re unoriginal and unimpressive, trying to be something you’re not.” As he spoke he had slid off the bed, kneeling at his brother’s feet to pull his socks off, internally smiling as he examined the delicate little ankle in his grasp.

Sasuke groaned dismally, throwing an arm over his face. “I bet he doesn’t even know my name…”

“Keep acting like me and there’s no point remembering your name. You’re trying to be ‘Itachi’, not you.” Smoky eyes lifted to regard the boy that quickly sat up on his elbows and looked torn, hopeful, and angry all at once.

There was so much emotion in his little brother that it made him hurt to see it cluttered. Made him hurt knowing it should hurt, when in fact he felt nothing.

“But then, what am I supposed to do? It’s easy for you! You don’t have to prove anything! You just have to do your whole proud asshole routine an--!”

A stern look floated through Itachi’s weathered features, resting the pads of his fingers on the fleshy sole of his brother’s foot. “Watch your mouth.”

The spectrum of expressions his brother could go through in short moments always fascinated him. Their mother was always content, and their father was always grim. How Sasuke had developed such diversity was astounding. An achievement in itself. Now, now his brother was smirking.

Smirking in that way that made Itachi want to slap him with duct tape and throttle him until he stopped moving for daring to look so handsome beyond his years. So arrogant. So positively… alluring.

“It’s my birthday.”

“So it’s your birthday wish I don’t tell Mom what you just said?”

“It’s your word over mine about who said what. They aren’t here.”

Itachi melted at hearing that. He could feel the way his brother’s whole leg wanted to kick and was stopped by the grasp he had of that little ankle as he kissed a bony kneecap.

“You’re right… They're not here…”

When the other said nothing he lifted his gaze to the stunned, apple-cheeked face. While many compared Itachi to something of a painting-perfect young man every young woman (and then some) wanted to explore the deeper facets of – there was no canvas and paint that could contain the diverse, beautiful little quirks his baby brother had.

The older's eyebrows knitted with concern at the irregular worry in his brother’s hushed tone. “What are you doing…?”

Fingers drew lazy circles in to the bottom of the hostage foot, Itachi’s gaze intently centered on every twitch and jump in the muscles of that progressively blushing face. “Watching you.”

“No~!” He was having a hard time not squealing at the tickling. Fists balled in the sheets. “That. Before. What the hell?”

Oh how he wanted to join in chewing on that plush lower tier that contained the urge to cry out with laughter.

“I figured I could give you something really useful for your birthday…”

“Eheh… Hn!” Sasuke’s back hit the bed from his stomach muscles cramping, vainly attempting to kick his foot free. “I alr-already got a stationary at scho-hool…”

“Have you ever kissed a girl, ototo?” To let his brother answer he stopped torturing the little foot.

Sasuke’s gaze drifted to the television as he chuckled for air, pawing the burning of his stomach as he watched the crawl of the news at the bottom of the mute screen. “Not… really…”

“Well either you have or you haven’t. There’s no real ‘really’ about it.”

“…That dumbass.”

Itachi found himself blinking. Wow. There was someone else on Sasuke’s mind. At uncovering that, he suddenly felt… hotly jealous. Almost considering finding out who that was to add them to his closet collection. Admittedly, he was not a very competitive person unless it came to something like this. Something like his brother’s attention.

He tried so hard, got so far – to always give his brother something to think about. Something to strive for.

Something to obsess about. Him to obsess about. Their father didn’t matter. Nothing he did was for that man’s approval – just the look he would get from his brother for receiving such praises.

“He bumped in to me, the first day of class…”

“. . . He?”

It wasn’t often that his brother was angry. But when he was, he could kill. Sasuke sat up, pinning his brother with a defensive glare. “It was an accident!” But he shriveled when he was met with a low chuckle and a glazed look from the fall of long bangs of the face between his knees.

“Did you enjoy it…?”

“What?!”

“Did you enjoy it. It’s not that hard a question, is it?”

While his brother sputtered and gaped at him Itachi crawled on to the bed, prowling to the boy’s side and then swinging a leg over the narrow stretch of his waist. Sasuke took no notice of being straddled, only bloated his cheeks with a pout as tanned hands settled outside of his shoulders.

“The hell kind of question is that? You’re being really strange today, niisan.”

“Maybe,” the elder agreed, seating himself on the thin legs beneath him and sharing a long stare with the boy that did nothing to object. Only watched on with something unfamiliar, and stunned.

But nothing that the older Uchiha could identify as fear. The only face that he could never remember his baby brother ever manifesting. Eyebrows furrowed as he dug through his memory cache for something more tremendous than shrieking and hiding away from a hermit crab on the beach during family vacation.

Pain, too. He couldn’t recollect that, save when Sasuke would scrape himself with soccer, or was smarted during combat practice. Or when he was four and couldn’t stop bawling about a jellyfish that had happened upon his ankle.

Acutely he could recite every mash of emotions his brother had ever experienced that had helped him grow to this point, except the famed triplet their family worked to shield him from: anger, fear – and loss.

“…Niisan?”

Glazed eyes pulled from their dazed world of sunny days gone by, focusing on the intent, consternated face of his untainted and ungrieved little brother. No doubt mimicking his own face with his knotted eyebrows and bottom lip jutted with concern.

“Sasuke,” he sighed, reaching down to scoot blasphemous ebon strands from his brow. Rarely did he ever call the boy by his name; not to leave him unrecognized – but to keep from shivering every time he watched the boy’s eyes light up from hearing it, proving he had his full attention.

His thumb dragged on the boyish, plump slope of snowy cheek. “Is there anything you really wanted, for your birthday?”

“You’re acting really strange… And you’re heavy.”

It was something he had accounted for, that Sasuke wouldn’t recognize a caress when it was given to him.

Those that coveted him at school were afraid to tarnish him, and their own family was very reserved with physical affection.

At a very young age Itachi had been stunned to hear he would be having a little brother or sister. Not because his parents wanted another child in the house – but from picturing the two of them being intimate at all; much less long enough to sire anything.

Honestly, Itachi had spent a long part of his childhood convinced he had hatched from an egg.

“Just answer the question, Sasuke.” For effect he added a note of impatience, demand that reflexively made his brother competitive. Determined to prove he couldn’t be controlled or tamed.

And yet he never hid how he was wrapped about his older brother’s finger, just like the black wire Itachi currently had on his knuckle.

This really wasn’t like his brother. Itachi was so transfixed on something, intent to get it. He never wanted to see the day someone opposed him, but wondered what could be so unreasonable to ask for that he couldn’t have it.

He also couldn’t fathom anyone denying Itachi whatever he wanted. It just wasn’t possible. That’s where he had to be special. He had to resist, just to prove that someone could. That he was different from everyone else.

The older brother smirked at watching smaller fists form, the one near Sasuke’s head and undoubtedly the other somewhere near his own knee. Always it was random, when the boy made the decision to be stubborn. Something that was…

…predictably unpredictable. Welcomed, but expected.

“Then I guess I’ll just have to interrogate you,” he purred. Long bangs lapping at his own jaw as he moved fluidly to get the higher wrist, smirking just slightly down to his little brother also toting a mild grin as he groped for the other.

“I’m not gonna crack this time,” the tinier boy boasted, nose crinkling with the gleam of his smirk.

Falsely he looked surprised, sitting up a bit and tossing his head to rid his own funeral-orchid hair from the impish confidence scribbled in to his brother’s face.

“Is that so…? We have the house and eighty bucks to ourselves, and you want to play Cops & Robbers?”

“I’m not answering your questions you filthy cop!” Sasuke twisted his head to the side, putting on a furious look while the other snickered over him.

Well, if the boy was so willing to be his prisoner…

“You’re lucky I don’t have my handcuffs,” the older growled gently, already reaching to the little black belt on his brother’s shorts. That uniform was so goofy, but a deep sea blue was definitely his brother’s color.

And so was red. He could only assume it was, anyway. It was so pleasant to look at, when Sasuke would scrape his knee or take a soccer ball to the head and come home dizzy with a gash on his temple.

The days his brother was sore from practice or brutalized in his games he wished he could play a larger part in. Often, those days he was busy with their father and had to rely on their mother’s expert camcorder work.

It seemed the only times Sasuke was pelted by the enemy’s determination was when Itachi could make it to the game. Imagine that, his brother’s eyes were somewhere other than on the ball. And later, their father would scold him for not paying attention and trying too hard.

Right now he wished the boy was trying. Putting up some kind of a fight while he was manhandled, Itachi biting the leather of the belt to leave his hands free for both holding down his brother’s forearms at the top of his head, and ripping at the loose tie about his thin neck.

If only his brother was struggling. Then, he might be able to take some satisfaction in witnessing more than that curious, bewildered look at his own wrists being confined in the gold-and-cobalt silk.

So easily he could noose that strip of cloth and watch the energetic fascination boil in to panic and maybe, just maybe he would get a last scream before it all ended and he could move on to their parents.

It would ruin his plans, though.

“What the hell are you—“

The older interjected with a fiercely quiet, “I’m the one asking the questions you shit.” He gave a tug on his progress, and for the first time Sasuke tugged back. “Resisting arrest could get you two months. Are you resisting?”

The boy looked away, brows knitted with frustration at how little sense his brother was making but he gave no second tug.

“Failing to cooperate in an investigation can get you nine months to five years, depending how heinous the crime is.”

“I don’t even know the charges. You can’t keep me locked up. I want my lawyer!”

The rebellious note said he was beginning to play along, permission for Itachi to take the belt and hook it on the waist of his slacks, keeping that as he came off the bed and yanked the boy by his newly-fitted wrists.

“It’s your word against mine, if you try to tell anyone,” he teased, knowing the words sounded familiar as he dragged the other to the head of the bed.

Sasuke in tow squeaked and did his best to keep his heels in the carpet. That was, until the other got wise and quickly hoisted him up on a shoulder, only to deposit him in the heart of the bed leaving the younger Uchiha to cry out at the brief rush of fun. Right after the older was upon him again, but this time he dared to hover his face above his brother’s just high enough to let the ends of his bangs flirt with alien cheeks.

He… did not recognize that look, in his brother’s eyes. All he was familiar with was that concentration, that complete fixation Itachi gave when set upon a very specific task. When none of the world around him mattered. And it occurred to him the only thing those eyes were on…

…was him.

It made his face warm, eyes lidding heavily as they drifted away. Of all the times for the butterflies of shyness to jam in his throat. “N-…niisan… --!”

Both of them were in shock. For a moment, Itachi was not quite sure what he had done. But when he was rewarded with the sight of his little brother’s wide eyes also failing to grasp what happened, he didn’t regret it.

In fact, his whole body ached with the speed at which his blood went aflame.

All in the span of seconds that it took for the imprint of his hand to blossom on an opalescent cheek.

That skin was so perfect. Cells bruised and flared easily. Even better, it was something akin to the imperfect smoothness of marble. From afar it was cool and the whitest white; but this close, the sun did not cast it aglow so much as his inner flame.

And oh… He knew that flame in his baby brother could burn so fiercely.

He wanted to be the first – the only witness to that event. To that passion.

But it seemed all his brother, his precious, mundane, boring brother wanted to do was bring fingers to the pain in his cheek, still at too much a loss for words.

The thick, inky traps of lashes closed around suddenly cold, if not vicious eyes.

…He wanted so much more for his brother.

And his brother was perfectly content to be so pathetic.

“Don’t cry,” his empty voiced urged. “You’re so ugly when you cry, ototo.”

In response Sasuke bit the inside of his lip, doing his best to obey the command. Their little game was over, and he could no longer identify the rules his brother had adopted.

Eyes fell wide with horror when lips grazed his ear, a gesture that could make him melt in to the mattress instead freezing his spine.

“If I see you cry,” he whispered, voice growing thinner as he dragged the wet of his tongue along his brother’s inner ear. More his words could be felt as they molded on his lips, rather than heard. “…Even one tear… I’ll kill you.”

Out of instinct, for the threat alone he wanted to. Coal disks glossed as he held down a whimper. But he didn’t doubt the seriousness in his brother’s tone, and though he had a weak laugh in his own voice, his eyes were screwed shut. “N-…niisan, cmon. We don’t play like this.”

In the heavy atmosphere about them, Sasuke had not noticed that his tie-bound wrists were now buckled to his headboard.

With him sat on shapely thighs, there was nothing impeding his ability to unfasten the white buttons of his brother’s shirt. It was a task that did not require his eyes nor his thoughts, and so he devoted them to basking in his petrified visage.

He couldn’t help noticing… something akin to fascination, somewhere in those pinpricked eyes. In turn, he too was fascinated. However, he had much more interesting things to look at.

Sasuke’s quick breathing made the muscles of his stomach flutter, and all of the excitement left petal-pink nubs irate and soon targets of his affection.

Affection. Affliction. …Whichever.

Still, their mother had not been kidding about the boy’s need to wear sunblock at his practices and games. So pale, Itachi was certain that his brother sooner burned than tanned.

“…Sasuke.” He couldn’t pry his eyes away, dabbing life on to his dry lips as he parted with a long-kept breath. Fingers tracked the valleys created by his ribs, thumb running the cave of bone that lead to his tenuous belly. “…The more you scream, the less I’ll do to you.”

It was a lie, but he needed his brother’s complete cooperation. By giving him the obvious lesser of two evils, he would do his best to fulfill those requirements. Below the pads of his digits he could feel the heightened pulse that responded to his threats, grasping the flat of his youthfully indefinite waist to soothe at a place Sasuke had not yet outgrown. Since he was tiny and coated in babyfat, he had always lulled when there was a rub outside of his naval.

If he could assure his brother that everything would be okay if he just did what he said, he wouldn’t have to worry about a single thing.

Not a thing.

Every scream, every groan of a mattress that had once been his own when he was Sasuke’s size… Everything would carry down the air vent just beside the hoof of the bed.

Carry down to the one just outside their parents’ closet.

Through his closed eyelids Sasuke could still imagine the dead gaze of his brother.

Knuckles turned white and the ends of his fingers a bright apple in how hard he pulled at his restraints.

And then… in the distance, through the ringing in the back of his mind…

He could hear people chattering. In a fit over something, even disgusted. Shouting, muffled and distant, just before there was a world-shattering CRACK.

Sasuke sat up in his bed, eyes refusing to focus in the stab of daylight through his window. All he could make out was a pair of blue blobs falling on to his floor.

A third blob peeked in, just before they yelled in a panic. “There’s a survivor!!”

Several feet thudded up the stairs, and as his vision cleared he could catch the gleam of something on each of their chests. Squinting, he could make out what they were.

Badges. He gazed hazily down to what one of them tossed on the floor, recognizing the general shape and the bright red paint as a crowbar.

“What…” Sasuke coughed from the way his throat cracked, looking to his blankets and confirming that… he indeed was exactly as indecent as he felt. Pawing at the cover he could feel no clothing beyond the oversized cornflower shirt dripping from his shoulders.

It was only shut at the last three buttons. And not one of his. Bringing a lengthy sleeve up to his nose he could smell it, eyes falling shut in memories. Itachi’s aroma…

By then his room was full of police and he couldn’t give them any mind. The questions they asked made no sense, a warping effect caused by his blotted ears. They felt thick.

He reached up, and felt something lodged there, blinking a few times when he pulled free a bright orange…

…earplug? Instinctively he freed the other, a lot of his new world coming in to focus.

“Sasuke-kun?”

Black eyes lifted to the woman that sat beside him on his bed. “Inuzuka-san… What…”

It occurred to him he should be angry about his door. “What the hell!” he snapped at a pair of them. Beside him he heard the snap of latex and glanced over to watch the older woman, a work-friend of his father’s, peel gloves off her hands.

Bloody gloves. Fear choked him, shoulders tightening.

Inuzuka-san was the town’s top coroner. As he heard, her daughter was a veterinarian and animal forensics expert, and their son trained the dogs. The whole family was in on it, ever since her husband died in the line of duty. It made their families kind of close.

Yet another person barged in to his room, adjusting his shower cap and shaking his head. “No one else in the house, sir.”

She released a sigh, looking to the open window. “Itachi must have barricaded him here, then gave chase. Is that stretcher here yet?”

Sasuke still didn’t get along with Kiba. He knew for a fact that the guy raided the evidence lockers to have fun with his little high school gang. The only reason he knew was because they had boasted about cutting class when he was merely on his way home from school.

They had been at odds since. It wasn’t like Sasuke really needed friends anyway.

Why couldn’t he focus? Until now he hadn’t even noticed the name she mentioned. Grabbing at her sleeve he urged hastily.

“Where is he?! Niisan, he gave chase to what?”

She didn’t feel very inclined to answer him, and so she didn’t. She only nodded and stood, flagging the stretcher over. “Sasuke, are you wearing anything under there?”

The question made him come to terms with his own nakedness, ears burning as he looked away. “I… There’s… pants in my closet…” He mumbled a thanks when she went to fetch a pair and tossed them over. “Can’t you guys… get out or something?”

“Just hurry up,” the woman barked, arms folding over her chest as she turned around. The firm sound of clearing her throat made the other officers turn around as well.

Getting to his feet was potentially the last thing he should have done. As soon as he stood to pull the jeans up the rest of the way his vision blotted out. Everything went white, his ears, his eyes – maybe even his nose, because he couldn’t feel the inevitable impact of himself to the floor. Or hear anyone reacting around him.

He must not have been out very long though, staring up to the ceiling of the stairwell with his ears ringing and fading in to his own breathing coming back on him from the oxygen mask. One of the paramedics guiding the stretcher peered over, smiling down to him.

“You should be just fine,” Shizune breathed, settling her hand in his filthy hair and soothing it away from his forehead. “It looks like you’re just exhausted.”

There was no way to tell what time it was, but lunch should be starting soon.

Something still bothered him about all of this. Why were they in his house…? And him in a mask? The thought made him tug at the latter, but he didn’t brave sitting up as he stared foggily up to the short-haired woman.

“Tousan and Kaasan went for dinner and a movie... Did they…?”

Far off he could hear the whine of a camera flash-bulb, instinctively blinking away a flash that hadn’t reached him. Looking in the direction of the noise, he noticed it was down the hall, to their parents’ room.

Several more police were there. All in gloves.

And search powder on the walls. Even right now, there was one at the busted glass coffee table and the shattered television.

…The red gloves she had been pulling off. That’s what had been bothering him.

Shizune was still recovering from her gutted expression before she could grab the boy that bolted off of the moving stretcher. Panic kept him moving sooner than acknowledging the way his body wanted to deadpan and empty its contents as soon as possible.

Not even from what he feared was going to be there when he crashed through the fence of officers. But rather, what had exhausted him to the point he couldn’t know how earplugs got where they did, or why he was in his brother’s shirt.

Sasuke didn’t get two steps in to the room before he saw red.

And not from anger.

He had slipped on a loose strap of caution tape, sending him sprawling over the crimson fibers of the soaked carpet. Eye level with the mound of mutilated fabric and hair that he could barely distinguish as his parents.

“Someone, get him the hell out of here!!” That demanding woman again, sending people in to action.

The young Uchiha lost consciousness at the epiphany that mounds of bloody flesh don’t just invite themselves in to a person’s house.

And the haunting, permanent way his mother’s eyes stared up to a certain spot in the ceiling.

The part of the ceiling that was his floor, right under his bed.

He was unconscious with the overwhelming concept that he had slept so soundly with this scene right below him.