The Last Ordinary Morning

On the last morning, Itachi woke before the birds and lay still, listening to his family breathe. The house was old and thin-walled, and he had learned to read it the way other boys learned to read clouds. His father slept heavily and turned over twice an hour, the floorboards complaining under the futon. His mother slept lightly and woke before anyone, and he heard her now, the soft drag of the kitchen door, the clink of the rice pot lifted from its shelf. Across the hall, Sasuke slept the way children sleep, completely, with a small whistling snore that he would have denied with his whole body if anyone had told him about it. Itachi counted the snores. He got to forty before he made himself get up. In the kitchen his mother was washing rice. She didn't turn around. The window above the sink was the grey of a wet stone, and the light made her look older than she was. Or perhaps it wasn't the light. She knew. He had never told her, and she had never asked, and she knew anyway, the way she always knew when he'd come home hurt from a mission no matter how carefully he walked through the door. "You're up early," Mikoto said. "I thought I'd walk Sasuke to the Academy." Her hands stopped in the water. Just for a second. Then they started again, turning the grains over and over, the water going cloudy. "He'll like that," she said. "He'll pretend he doesn't." "I know." "Sit. I'll make the tamagoyaki the way you like. With the sugar." He sat. He watched her crack the eggs one-handed, the way she'd taught him when he was four, the shells going into a neat pile. He watched her roll the omelette in the square pan, layer on layer, her wrist turning in a motion he had seen a thousand times and would not, after tonight, see again. He made himself memorise it. He had the Sharingan; he could have copied it perfectly in a glance. He didn't use it. Some things ought to be remembered with ordinary eyes. His father came in at six, already in his police uniform, the Uchiha crest stitched on his back. Fugaku looked at Itachi across the table for a long moment, and Itachi met it. There was a great deal in that look. There had been a great deal in every look between them that summer, ever since Shisui's body had been pulled out of the Naka River and the clan elders had started asking Itachi where he'd been that night. "You're not on duty today," his father said. "No. I have the day off." "Hm." Fugaku picked up his chopsticks. He ate a piece of tamagoyaki, chewed, swallowed. Then, without looking up: "Sasuke has been practising his shuriken. He's improved. You should see it, when you have time." It was the closest his father had ever come to asking him for anything. Itachi looked at the top of his bowed head, at the grey beginning at the temples, and he thought about the meeting at the Naka shrine, the plans laid out on the tatami under the stone tablet, the coup they would launch in a matter of days. He thought about Danzō's dry voice in a room without windows, and the Third Hokage's tired face, and the choice they had put in front of him, which was not a choice at all. "I'll try," Itachi said. Sasuke came thundering down the hall at a quarter past, his shirt on backwards, the fan crest on his chest instead of his back. He saw Itachi at the table and stopped dead in the doorway. His face did several things at once. "You're here," Sasuke said. "Why are you here?" "I live here." "You're never here. You're always on missions." Sasuke narrowed his eyes. "Is something wrong?" He was seven. He shouldn't have been able to see it. But he was an Uchiha, and he was Itachi's brother, and he had spent his whole short life watching Itachi, learning which silences meant tired and which meant something worse. Itachi smiled at him, and it took everything he had. "Your shirt's on backwards," he said. "Fix it. I'll walk you to the Academy." Sasuke's whole face lit up. Then he remembered he was too old to be that happy about it, and scowled, and stomped back up the hall. Their mother laughed into the dishwater. Their father hid his mouth behind his teacup. For one moment the kitchen was full of ordinary morning light, and the four of them sat inside it like a family in a painting, and Itachi held very still so it would last. The walk to the Academy took eleven minutes. Itachi had timed it before, on the rare mornings he'd been home. Today he walked slowly, and Sasuke, who usually ran ahead, seemed to understand that the point of the walk was the walk. He stayed at Itachi's side. He talked. He talked about the Academy, about a kid called Naruto who was the worst in the class and kept painting things he wasn't supposed to paint. He talked about Iruka-sensei's lecture on the founding of the village, which he'd found boring, because he already knew all of it. He talked about the Great Fireball Technique, and how Father had taught it to him on the pier by the lake, and how he'd burned his lips the first week but now he could make a fireball as big as a cart. "Father said 'as expected of my son,'" Sasuke said, and his voice went small and proud on the words, like he was holding something warm in both hands. "He's never said that to me before. He only ever says it to you." "He meant it," Itachi said. "I know he meant it." Sasuke kicked a stone. "I'm going to be as strong as you. Stronger. I'm going to join the Military Police and then I'm going to be a captain and then everyone will say 'as expected of Sasuke' instead of 'as expected of Itachi.'" The stone skittered ahead of them and dropped into the gutter. The Uchiha district gate was behind them now, the red-and-white fans on the lanterns, the police headquarters with its long shadow. Ahead, the village was waking up, shop shutters rattling open, a man sweeping water off his step. A woman at a dango stall waved to Itachi. He had bought from her since he was six. He waved back. "You will be stronger than me," Itachi said. Sasuke stopped walking. He looked up at his brother with his whole heart on his face, sudden and naked. "Really?" Itachi crouched, so they were level. Sasuke's forehead was right there, round and serious, a little damp at the hairline from the walk. Itachi looked at it and thought of all the times he'd pressed two fingers to it and pushed, gently, when Sasuke asked for something he couldn't give. Another time. Next time. Forgive me. He'd done it so often it had become a kind of language between them, one word with a hundred meanings. He didn't do it now. He put his hand on Sasuke's head instead, flat, the way their father never did, and left it there. "Really," he said. "You'll grow up and you'll be stronger than anyone. And you'll hate a great many things along the way, and that's all right. Hate them as much as you need to. Just keep going." Sasuke frowned. "Why would I hate things?" "You'll see." Itachi let go and stood. His knees felt strange, as if they belonged to someone older. "Go on. You'll be late. Iruka-sensei will make you clean the erasers." "Will you come and watch my shuriken after school? At the training ground in the woods? I can hit the blind spot now. The one behind the rock. Father says I'm almost there." It was such a small thing to ask. A boy and a field and some steel stars and an hour of afternoon. Itachi had refused it so many times, with two fingers and an apology, that Sasuke had stopped expecting yes. You could see that in how he asked: fast, with his chin up, ready to be disappointed and pretend he wasn't. Itachi thought about the night ahead. The moon would rise at a quarter past eight. The man in the orange mask who called himself Madara would come at nine. By the time Sasuke came home from the training ground, late, because he would stay out practising until it was too dark to see the targets, the street would already be quiet. He thought about the Third Hokage, who had promised him Sasuke would be protected, that the village would raise him and never tell him why. "I'll be there," Itachi lied, and his voice didn't shake, because he had been trained since he was four years old to make sure it never would. Sasuke grinned. All of his face, all at once, with a gap where a back tooth had come out the week before. Then he turned and ran up the Academy steps and in through the big door, and didn't look back, because he believed he'd see his brother again in a few hours, and there was no reason in the world to look back at something you would see again. Itachi stood in the street until the door closed. Then he walked to the dango stall and bought three skewers, the way he always did, and stood at the counter and ate them slowly in the thin morning sun, one ball at a time. The woman asked if he had the day off. He said yes. She said it was nice to see him with his little brother, they looked so alike, and he said thank you, and he paid her, and he left her a tip that was much too large. She called after him that he'd made a mistake with the coins. He didn't turn around.