Chapter Text
And there he was, exuding all kinds of untamed criminal energy, even while sleeping like a dirty, sweaty baby. At the very least, in his unconscious state and especially by remaining unconscious, he was being very cooperative.
An hour or so after her failed attempt to call her mother, the box of cereal was down to only fifty percent of its original content as Sarada’s running thoughts munched away on the bits of processed grains and caramel.
As expected, the criminal on her couch was a matter for worry, though for maybe unexpected reasons. She had checked on the boy’s condition before, and assuming her dad had made sure the boy wasn’t bleeding out on the inside or something - She glared at the man’s picture on the TV stand - she found Itachi to be in a non-ideal, albeit acceptable, but actually unacceptable state. Did that make sense? He was at no risk of dying, alright, even though he made the perfect picture of a corpse whenever he wasn’t sleep-strangling his own moans and mutters. And that was what the problem was.
Her reservations about hosting a criminal aside, Sarada was by no means heartless - Or clueless for that matter. If her experiences from the previous one or two years were anything to go by, then young shinobi found themselves up in arms against the law quite often, but almost never for their own reasons. Behind any kid in need of a good old punch in the face, there was an adult in need of a much bigger, much heavier punch. And if she had to apply those experiences right now, to the boy right here, then she couldn’t help but think he was already well-served.
For an hour or so now, she had been watching canyons form on Itachi’s forehead and observing the periodic tremor in his eyelids until, inevitably, something snapped inside of her, and she began rummaging. Checking the old, semi-used TV stand, she found a box of “regular” medications - Those you use for treating sore throats, upset stomachs, various other flu- and cold-related symptoms, and finally, pain.
She pursed her lips, eyes fixing the label as though she was holding back from scolding the poor little pack of pills. Yes, acetaminophen was a god-sent for your everyday aches and pains, but this one was in a different league. The boy on the couch, without checking his backside, had at least eight major injuries. Even the chainmail that should’ve protected his vital area was coated in dried blood, clearly having failed its intended purpose in the face of whatever jutsu had nearly executed him. Without a doubt, this was a mission for mom’s medicine cabinet!
Discarding her previous idea of going with the basics, she scurried off to the storage room next door to retrieve a colorful collection of “the good stuff” that she had never even touched before because, well, her mum could do it all herself. Healing ninjutsu and all. But today was the day. Her mom was at work, the boy on the living room couch in agony, and Sarada’s fingers were twitching with excitement as she returned with an arm full of opioids, right until they froze when her eyes met his.
Itachi was awake.
In just a second, the young kunoichi had a kunai at the ready, poised and prepared to strike. Never mind the vial of medicine that slipped from her grasp in the process, shattering into a tinkling mess before her bare feet.
Itachi barely hid a flinch, eyes jumping between her face, the shards below, and back, studying her and sizing up what he surely understood to be his warden for the time being. While it was subtle, Sarada noticed his breath picking up speed, probably realizing the trouble - danger, potentially - he was in. Who knows, perhaps he had an eye for family resemblances, finding the visage of the infamous Sasuke Uchiha in hers. That, or he might’ve seen the family picture on the TV stand, concluding he was under the care of his maybe-captor’s daughter.
After half a minute or so, Itachi’s studious gaze relented. A hand - technically both hands, as they were bound together - trembled but came up to cover the boy’s mouth as he faced away, his expression strained, distorted in pain if not for the effort it took to keep it together.
“Do you…” She hesitated, feeling silly for even asking at this point, but while unreasonable, it was entirely possible he’d refuse his warden to get so much as near him. “Do you want pain meds?”
He eyed her from the side and then, of course, nodded.
“Good.” She moved her foot forward, changing course when she felt a wet shard poke up against her unprotected sole. Right, I broke one. The prisoner watched her warily as she stepped around the mess on the floor and set the opioids she’d brought down on the dresser to the right, all the while returning Itachi’s gaze just as warily.
Hopefully, Itachi would be as cooperative as he seemed willing. His hands were bound, sure, but they were hands, still, and he could probably pry the syringe away from Sarada in a moment of carelessness, if he so wanted.
Every now and then, her eyes flickered to the meds, debating which one was best suited to relieve the nukenin’s pain. Truth be told, Sarada had never been in a situation that required using such heavy hitters. She had knowledge in battlefield medicine, not experience. But, oh well, serious injury was serious injury.
“I will be injecting intramusculary”, she said, “if that’s alright.”
He nodded once more.
Nodding back at him, she prepared a syringe with her opioid of choice, then left the dresser and knelt next to the couch, slowly and cautiously, awkwardly maintaining eye contact while doing so, even when Itachi personally did not.
“You probably know how this goes,” she said, rolling up Itachi’s sleeve and finding a spot clear of injury to clean with an alcohol wipe. He gave no signs of struggle, neither resisting nor trying to sway the fellow shinobi. There wasn’t so much as a blink as the needle pierced the criminal’s skin, the previously shattered glass having drawn thrice the reaction out of the guy than the injection of a foreign substance.
Even when she was done and was putting everything away on the dresser, Itachi remained still and oddly quiet. Having all but lost interest in his warden, he resigned himself to observing the ceiling light. This went on for a while.
She observed him warily. Tapped her foot to pass the time. Checked the room for potential makeshift weapons for the third time today, probably. Observed again.
The silence nagged at her and, eventually, she couldn’t help. “Aren’t you gonna say anything? Ask anything?”
No response. Not even a single noise of complaint.
She turned away, displeased.
Clearly, he was in pain, yet he refused to make a sound. Sure Sarada had just administered him an opioid, but the painkiller shouldn’t take effect until at least a couple of minutes later, or that’s what her school books said, anyway. Suspicion told her that maybe Itachi was just a macho-angsty teen, refusing to let the world know he was born with pain receptors. Or did he think Sarada a sadist to mock or take advantage of his pain? Frankly, there were some sick individuals out there, but Sarada was not one of them!
“I have a…” Sarada’s head snapped to attention as she finally heard Itachi’s voice. “...a fairly good idea of where I am. And why. And… the rest… I don’t think I’m in a position to ask for answers after… everything.”
“Everything?” She quirked an eyebrow. “As in?”
He took a quiet breath, hopefully not feeling muddle-headed yet, because Sarada was quite invested in knowing where this one was going. “Everything I did to our family.” Her eyes nearly popped out of her head. “And everything I didn’t do. The mas-”
“Wait wait wait. Our family? Our?? Who is ”our”?” She studied his face closely.
Itachi fell back into silence, looking at Sarada as though he hadn’t quite heard her question. Then slowly, something akin to a frown crossed his face, mouth opening to ask a clarifying question, but stopped when Sarada got ahead of him.
“Uchiha???”
Itachi nodded hesitantly.
She whipped around in an instant, stuffing her head and arms into the TV stand’s compartments as though she wanted to climb into its cavities, knocking over some candles here, a dusty vase there, and tearing an old picture out of the darkness. A corner was chipped. Lightning-like creases ran through the faces of Juugo, Suigetsu,... Karin, and finally, her dad, frozen in time when they were barely older than Sarada was now - Barely older than Itachi was now.
She looked to the old photograph, then the Uchiha boy on the couch, then to the Uchiha boy in the photograph.
This was insane. She really hadn’t noticed at all. But seeing those slanted, onyx eyes now, she couldn’t help like a younger version of her father was staring back at her. You’d only need to remove the deep tear-throughs and the ponytail, and essentially, you’d have a carbon copy of Sasuke Uchiha.
The Uchiha Clan, due to grave misfortune, nearly lost its entire lineage. At the present time, the only ones known to be living to carry on the bloodline are Sasuke Uchiha and his daughter.
The library would need to update its records, a third Uchiha having joint their family ranks.
Sage be damned. If she was interpreting things correctly - and of course she was, because what else was she supposed to make of this - then she had a brother. And nobody had ever cared to tell her.
Her breath shook, a cold pour running down her back, passing through her skin, into her blood, into her heart as it was squeezed together alongside the photograph in her hand. Without another word, she whipped a pillow off the couch, its material soft and harmless, and stormed out the door.
Whatever had tightened its grip around her heart was also filling her lungs, threatening to drive out her breath if not for the fact that she couldn’t help but hold it until she felt like bursting. And burst she did.
With great force - but calculated, little damage - the couch pillow was smashed and thrust and thrown into the wall, the apartment walls drinking up the already well-muted onslaught. “Damn him! Damn her!” And again. “Every damn time!” And again. Had she been her mom, the walls would’ve surrendered in one hit, taking the entire apartment complex down into a mountain of rubble.
Who could’ve thought that the discovery of one new family member would bring it all back to the surface?
For so long, he had been gone. Gone, gone, gone. Not working late, like normal fathers do, but always on his travels, never to be seen. And her mum had insisted that her dad loved her. That same dad who wouldn’t so much as recognize his daughter because he had never even been part of her life! Not because he was on business trips, missing some moment here and there, like some fathers do, but eleven gods-damned years!
And her mother was in on it, too. Most likely at least. The note her father had left was discussing Itachi so casually as though he’d been a regular topic of conversation. It wasn’t the first time that her mom had helped hide the remnants of her husband’s past relationships. She’d never forget finding that red-haired woman in the picture, standing next to her father with glasses just like hers, proof that something fishy was going on in her father’s love life.
This time around, they had deprived her of her own brother. Heck, and that was the tip of the iceberg. The boy was a missing nin, for crying out loud!
With a final battle cry, the pillow was tossed across the hallway, meeting and yanking a picture frame off the wall, breaking the girl’s spell. Back to her senses, she threw herself onto the ground, sliding over the wooden tiles to catch the frame and save it from turning into yet another pile of shards on the apartment floor.
She sighed in relief, breathing again. The frame had not a scratch, thankfully. Her mom really liked that one…
Crap, why did Sarada even still care?
The girl thought about deliberately smashing the frame and picture to pieces, but sitting up, she gazed into a snowy, mountainous landscape with a small, warm cabin near the top. She wondered where Itachi had previously lived, where he had been raised, and who had raised him.
When had he come to Konoha? Sarada didn’t remember ever seeing him at the Academy, but judging by his headband, he had been registered as a Leaf Ninja at some point at least.
One particular line of thought stuck out: What kind of life could’ve led him down the path of betrayal? Where had her father been? Shouldn’t he have been there to guide him? To save him, perhaps? Had her father abandoned Itachi in his formative years, just like he had the other child? Was getting married and having another child perhaps the reason for Itachi’s abandonment? Did he no longer matter to her father?
What if her father had been there? What if, all those years he was gone, he was tending to the other child he evidently cared more about than her?
She didn’t know what to make of this. Didn’t know which one was worse. Tears sprang to her eyes.