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The World Was All Before Him	By : SuishouTenshi Category: Naruto > Yaoi - Male/Male > Naruto/Sasuke Views: 2783 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto, nor any of the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
- 9
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The World Was All Before Him
- SuishouTenshi
Note: I’m introducing a canon character in this chapter who was mentioned only by name in the manga/anime. If you remember him, then good for you. If you don’t remember him, well, you should probably look him up. If you haven’t realized from the previous chapter that I like using dead characters in this story... then, well... just read it.
Act IV, Scene III: Journey of a Thousand Miles
A true shinobi understands that cynicism is not a cowardly defense for the pessimistic or repressed, but rather, a constant form of preemptive strike.
At nine years of age, Uchiha Itachi had fully mastered the sophistication of doubt. To him, the glass is half empty because an enemy dipped his tongue where it didn’t belong and it was Itachi’s job to refill the cup, preferably with said enemy’s blood; but even Uchiha Itachi was compelled to shed his uniform and don a kimono for New Year’s celebrations.
From village festivals to clan gatherings, Itachi made sure to dress as casually as his station permitted. So if clothing really makes the man-child, then three weeks of downtime meant that for the first time in a year, Itachi was as normal as clan heirs could be.
Unfortunately, normality falls apart too often at the most inopportune times. Itachi much preferred the burden of battle-induced adrenaline over stressful inactivity, so it was no surprise that on the day before his team was scheduled to return to active duty, he had already changed back into his battle gear and was agitatedly pacing around the Uchiha compound out of sheer need for movement.
His wandering brought him to the kitchen, so desperate for work that he would even jump on the chance to help his mother peel potatoes.
It turned out that Uchiha Mikoto was not present, though her younger son certainly was. And Sasuke wasn’t alone.
Sitting casually at the kitchen table was a boy two years older than Itachi. At eleven, Uchiha Shisui bore the typical appearance of a Uchiha male, though his jet-black hair was tied back into a long braid which tempted Itachi’s father’s rage every time without fail.
As the son of one of Itachi’s distant uncles, Shisui inherited the Sharingan gene but none of its responsibilities. He casually wasted precious time in the Academy and was only recently pressed by Fugaku to graduate. A talent-less child characterized solely by detachment, Shisui’s only goal in life was to practice relaxation into an art form. Unfortunately, he was also one of those who love to “spread the joy”, and Itachi had been his primary target for a good number of years now.
Itachi’s entrance bade Shisui to look away from a prone Sasuke and wave in audacious cheerfulness. Itachi ignored him in favor of checking on his oddly silent little bother. Sasuke sat next to Shisui, eyes shut, head slumped over the tabletop, two skinny arms dangled lifelessly at his sides.
Itachi cocked an eyebrow at an amused Shisui. His forever cheerful cousin answered his unasked question, “I think Sasuke-chan is depressed, Itachi.”
Upon hearing his brother’s name, Sasuke shot up, sought Itachi out and tackled.
“Nii-san...” the boy whined.
Itachi gingerly collected Sasuke into his arms, frowning, “Today’s Sunday. Aren’t you supposed to be playing with Naruto?”
The question wasn’t meant to be a reprimand of any sort, so Itachi couldn’t understand why Sasuke began to wail.
Over at the table, Shisui didn’t even try to cover up his mirth. Itachi scowled. Their large family and Konoha’s citizens alike thought it adorable and harmless that Sasuke had the tendency to cry at any given moment. He’s only four, they liked to say, as if they’d forgotten that at four, Itachi had already lived through the Third Great Ninja War and seen countless clansmen lose their lives. They’d forgotten that tears were deemed cowardly for a shinobi, and it would not do for Sasuke to show such weakness so unguardedly. Uchiha’s enemies would surely take advantage of those tears. But more worriedly, at this rate, Sasuke would never be worth a thing in their father’s eyes.
Itachi knew exactly who to blame for Sasuke’s meek disposition. Namikaze Naruto had slept over enough times for Itachi to observe their perverse “friendship”. The Kyuubi vessel—little monster he was—made it his personal mission to tease Sasuke to tears at every available occasion, after which he would engulf Sasuke with the entirety of his poisonous attention. Overtime, like a master praising his pet for well-performed tricks, Naruto managed to condition an unaware Sasuke into a crybaby purely for his own amusement. Itachi had pleaded with his parents to extract his little brother from Naruto's influences, but Mikoto was forever adamant about needing Yondaime’s favor, and Fugaku, as if he only needed one capable son, conceded to his wife every single time.
Sasuke squirmed in his grasp, and Itachi realized that he was squeezing the boy a bit too tightly.
Itachi reluctantly turned to Shisui.
“Naruto-chan is over at the Hyuugas, apparently,” Shisui supplied.
“Again!” Sasuke shouted.
Itachi softly ruffled his brother’s hair. “I thought Naruto said he wanted to introduce you to his new friends. Did he retract his invitation?”
Sasuke looked up. Itachi was relieved to note that tears finally gave away to anger.
“No. But he’s supposed to spend Sundays with me! Then he said Hyuuga Neji was going to teach him to throw shuriken and wanted me to learn with him.” Sasuke said bitingly, his usually pale cheeks turned an unflattering red. “What’s so great about throwing shuriken anyway? Any shinobi can do it. Nii-chan, I bet you’re better at it than Hyuuga Neji. Shisui-nii too!”
Shisui laughed. “Oh, I dunno. Hyuuga ranks a lot higher than me at the Academy.”
“That’s because you slack off too much,” Itachi retorted.
Shisui smiled tightly. “Comfort Sasuke-chan first. Leave the reprimands for later, would ya? Must you multi-task even when being a bastard?”
“I don’t see any need for comfort. The quicker Sasuke gets rid of that boy, the better.” He ruffled Sasuke’s disheveled hair. “Trust me, Sasuke. This is really a blessing.”
The incredulous expression of outrage directed back at him said otherwise.
“Nii-san!” Sasuke cried indignantly. “Naru-chan is my best friend!”
“When you enter the Academy in the spring, you will find a flock of best friends truly worthy of your attention.”
This only caused Sasuke to glare at him as if betrayed. Possibly overwhelmed, Sasuke made to run, and was promptly reined back by a tug, courtesy of Shisui.
“Whoa! Where do you think you’re going, little man?” Shisui pinned him down by the table and scolded him with an affectionate tap on the nose.
Sasuke squirmed. But to Itachi’s relief, he didn’t cry. “Nii-san doesn’t like Naru-chan, so he doesn’t want Naru-chan to like me. Even though I like Naru-chan a lot. So if he doesn’t wanna help me get Naru-chan to like me again, I don’t wanna like Nii-san anymore either!” he shouted into Shisui’s shirt, determined to deny Itachi eye-contact.
Said older brother determinedly kept a growl in check. Shisui implored him to apologize by batting those useless eyes at him, and was rightfully ignored.
“Okay...” sighed Shisui the Mediator. “First of all, I think Naruto-chan still likes you quite a bit, so really, you don’t need any help in that area....”
Sasuke snorted with a rather adult-like cynicism. “He likes the Hyuugas now.”
“Well, perhaps Hyuuga Neji and Hinata have their own charm, but Naru-chan has been your best friend since before you could remember. That’s three years of being best friends the Hyuugas can never take away from the two of you.” Shisui looked to beseech Itachi again for some words or gestures of reassurance. Itachi’s crossed arms said that his efforts were wasted.
“But he’s spending time with them now,” Sasuke whined pathetically, and Itachi could barely hold back his growl of disgust upon witnessing the possibly irrevocable damage done to his brother at that little beast’s hands.
Their cousin, however, somehow still thought this conversation was worth having. “True,” he continued, “but growing up means both of you will meet new people and make more friends. It’s inevitable. The important thing to remember is that he still wants you to be his friend, and you’ll have to keep up your end of this friendship by being a good sport. You can meet his new friends and become their friend as well.”
“You mean... share?” Sasuke asked as if the word tasted sour on his tongue.
Shisui chuckled. “Yup. It’s what grown up kids do.”
“Well, I don’t like sharing.” Sasuke responded sagely. “I only ever let Naru-chan play with my blocks.”
“It’s true,” Itachi couldn’t help but interject, earning him a sideway glare from his rebelling younger sibling. “He’d offer his inheritance to that little monster if he knew how to.”
“Don’t call him that!” Sasuke positively snarled.
Taken aback, Itachi was stunned into silence. The little Sasuke who’d adored and admired him since birth was seconds away from instigating a fight with him. Him! The beloved Nii-san! Itachi could feel the waves of indignant betrayal steadily churning into hate for the blond four-year-old.
“Hey, hey!” Shisui twisted Sasuke’s ear. “Don’t speak to your brother like that. Even if he deserves it.”
“But he’s mean to Naru-chan for no reason!”
“He’s just frustrated because he cares about you.”
Itachi growled. This ridiculous argument had gone on for too long. “No,” he stated adamantly, “I’m frustrated because I wish that little monster was never born. His presence makes you weak—“
“Hey, Itachi, stop it...”
“—His birth was a mistake that cost the souls of—“
“Itachi, we’re not supposed to...”
“—countless Konoha heroes and all he’ll ever amount to is a spoiled manipulator!”
Shisui was speechless for once, and was doing his best to hold a quaking Sasuke close. Sasuke’s shoulders shook soundlessly, until, when the silence became suffocating, he snapped back.
To the young prodigy’s astonishment, Sasuke’s eyes were dry despite their obvious redness.
“Fine!” Sasuke barked. “Then I’ll be strong! I’ll practice shuriken and kunai and do everything Nii-san want me to do. But I’m doing it because I wanna be Naru-chan's best friend. So Nii-san can’t say Naru-chan is a bad influence anymore. And you can’t call him ‘monster’ either! You shouldn’t try to make me hate Naru-chan, ‘cause Naru-chan would never make me hate Nii-san!”
Itachi’s retort of “Somehow, I doubt that” was suppressed against his will because after he was done with his speech, Sasuke jumped up and seemed like he couldn’t wait to escape.
“Come with me, Shisui-nii! We’ll go find Naru-chan. I can share!”
Sasuke had Shisui’s wrist in an iron grip. Itachi only had a second to register Shisui’s amused grin before both of them disappeared out the door.
Sasuke’s age bellied the strength of his clutch. Shisui could only follow along obediently as Sasuke dragged him through the village toward the Hyuuga compound. He considered himself lucky in one respect, since Sasuke couldn’t use chakra yet, so at least he was spared the pain of being hauled along from rooftop to rooftop.
Despite having longer limbs, Shisui found it hard to keep up with Sasuke at his provoked state. He chuckled nervously in response to the amused glances from villagers and only occasionally dared to steal glances at the back of Sasuke’s head. It was just a little creepy to see that familiar determined rigidity in Sasuke’s back, one usually so characteristically Itachi’s.
He paid no mind to where they were going. Sasuke seemed to have a mental compass in which the needle constantly pointed to Namikaze Naruto. He eventually found himself standing in front of one of the Hyuuga clan’s enclosed, super-private training grounds. Two servant girls guarded the front entrance like immobile dolls.
To Shisui’s surprise, when Sasuke asked to see Naruto, they stepped aside to let them through without argument. After the poorly concealed kidnapping incident last month, Shisui expected more resistance or security. Whether their lack of precautions meant the Hyuugas were fully confident in their improved defense or maybe the girls just didn’t perceive Shisui as a threat, he wasn’t sure. But he thought he was entitled to feel a little insulted at the very least. Nonetheless, being pissy at random strangers was Itachi’s area of expertise; Shisui preferred to believe in the philosophy that life was too short to remain angry for any reason. So he threw a flirtatious grin at the two unresponsive guards and let himself be dragged into a little clearing of green.
Naruto saw them first. The boy always had a peculiar habit of looking around nonstop, as if nothing was interesting enough to hold his attention for long. He bounded over excitedly, and Shisui immediately noticed Sasuke’s stiff spine relax.
“Sasuke! Yer here! Shisui-nii, you came to play too?” Naruto tackled Shisui and immediately began to scale his legs.
Shisui laughed. He didn’t live in the main house and rarely had the chance to see the little energetic blond. “I’m not a tree, you little monkey,” he admonished half-heartedly. In his opinion, all little children should be happy and outgoing like Naruto. He blamed Sasuke’s reticence entirely on Itachi’s influences.
Naruto ignored him and climbed until he had his arms firmly wrapped around Shisui’s neck. “Hey, Neji! Hinata! Come ’ere! This is Sasuke, and this is Sasuke’s cousin, Shisui-nii.”
Two white heads suddenly appeared in front of Shisui, or more accurately, Shisui had just noticed them. Naruto had the inimitable ability to draw all attention to his presence only, so magnetic he was — even as a child — that one often tended to forget other people’s existence entirely. It was a disconcerting sensation Shisui gladly welcomed, since he only ever found happiness around Naruto's person. He never minded being drawn to this child.
The boy, the famous Hyuuga Neji, stepped forward with Hinata cowering behind him and greeted Shisui, the elder one, first, exactly as propriety demanded.
“Uchiha-san, hello. It’s so rare to see you outside of school,” he stuck out a hand that Shisui wasn’t ashamed to shake. Combine a lot of laziness on Shisui’s part and a little brilliance on Neji’s, circumstance just so happened to place them in the same classroom this year. If Itachi were there, he no doubt would have reminded Shisui of his “failure”, but his stuck-up genius cousin wasn’t present, so Shisui humbly took Neji’s palm and grinned back unabashedly.
“Yo.” He then smiled gently at Hyuuga Hinata’s flushed cheeks. “Hi there. You alright now? That Cloud abductor didn’t hurt you, I hope?”
A mousy little yelp pierced their surrounding air. Shisui did his best to hold back his laughter, but Naruto apparently didn’t bother and was openly guffawing at Hinata’s shyness. Even her current body armor, Neji, smiled fondly.
“Hinata-sama is fine now,” Neji answered in her stead. Shisui’s ears perked up at the honorific. Even the number one elite Uchiha clan didn’t establish a caste system that would require the use of such strict honorifics, particularly between first cousins.
Neji added somewhat resignedly, “And Hiashi-oji-sama promised Yondaime-sama he wouldn’t let anyone find out about the identity of the kidnaper, for the sake of the treaty.”
Shisui shrugged unapologetically. “Sorry. Don’t know what to tell ya. Everyone knows though. Hard to keep a secret in this town.”
Naruto wiggled unhappily on Shisui’s back, clearly not interested in their conversation. He pointed a foot at a silently brooding Sasuke and chirped, “That’s Sasuke, Neji. Sasuke, that’s Neji. This is so awesome!”
A hand was similarly offered to Sasuke, only this time, it wasn’t accepted. Neji waited for a polite few seconds before withdrawing. To his credit, he didn’t seem offended at the direct rebuff.
He tried words this time. “Uchiha Sasuke-san, it’s nice to meet you finally. Naruto speaks about—”
He was cut off by Sasuke’s growled accusation, “Why do you have bandages around your head?”
Shisui looked to Neji, and was surprised to see rows of white bandages on Neji’s forehead. He was sure those weren’t there before the Academy let out for winter vacation.
“I hope you didn’t get into a fight,” Sasuke continued in a nauseatingly haughty tone that stank of Itachi’s mannerisms, unaware of the way Neji’s entire body stiffened up. “My brother says getting into a non-shinobi fight is silly. I hope you’re not teaching Naruto to fight.”
The training ground was eerily quiet once Sasuke stopped speaking. Shisui looked on from one child to another, feeling too tall and too out of place all of sudden. Hinata had taken a step back and was staring, if Shisui read her correctly, rather guiltily at her older cousin. Neji kept his face down, two little fists clenched tightly at his sides. Sasuke didn’t look the least bit intimidated though and was actually glaring back with a full scowl, as if he had a right to feel slighted.
“Neji, what’s wrong?” Naruto asked next to Shisui’s ear. “Did someone beat you up? It’s okay, Kaka-nii gets beat up a lot too. He’s always got bandages on him.”
A humorless chuckle bubbled up Shisui’s esophagus. Prodigy or not, it was still too absurd to compare a five-year-old to the legendary Copy-Ninja. In the entire village, Naruto was probably the only who could make that comparison and get away with it.
As if to further prove the powers of Namikaze Naruto, Neji looked up again at those words, sporting a sad smile. “It’s fine,” he said to Naruto, “I wear this brand with honor.” He then turned his grace to Sasuke, and forgave Sasuke’s weirdly offensive question with a curt nod.
Sasuke blushed angrily. Hinata suddenly clutched the back of Neji’s shirt and sniffed a little, earning herself a comforting pat on the head from Neji.
Shisui was completely lost. He was eleven. He was supposed to know more than these mere children. But to his infinite horror, it felt like a week-long battle had just been fought before his eyes in a matter of minutes. He looked to Naruto for assistance, but the boy had jumped down and was blabbing away to an irate Sasuke.
Soon, Naruto had Sasuke’s fingers in one hand and Neji’s wrist in another, with Hinata hanging on to Neji’s other side. The small blond hopped to the center of the clearing and loudly demanded shuriken lessons, announcing to all living things that dared to listen of his new group of friendship. He looked even more ecstatic than usual with his new friends in front of him and his old friend guarding his back.
It was just as well that Naruto was too jovial to realize Sasuke’s presence exuded an unfriendly menace, one taken in and expertly dissolved by Hyuuga Neji’s patience and maturity. If Sasuke looked more and more frustrated by the second, Shisui didn’t call him on it. He was just glad he came with Sasuke today. He could see even now that Neji would never leave Naruto's side voluntarily, no matter how hard Sasuke glared. It mattered not that Sasuke didn’t take up Neji’s hand. With Naruto as a conduit, they would never be able to escape each other.
-TBC
A/N: Title of the chapter comes from Lao Tzu’s “Tao Te Ching”. Full quote: “A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step”.
A/N 2: To be honest, I’ve been sitting on this chapter for weeks, and I was waiting for something to happen in the Naruto manga, something that would determine whether I would abandon this fic or not. But the Naruto manga isn’t telling me what I need to know, and it’s been over a month, so I’m going to publish this chapter and see how it goes.
So far, it doesn’t seem like I’ll be abandoning it. So I’m praying all goes well in canon. The next update — if there is one — will include Iruka, the rest of Naruto's age group, and Kakashi’s return (I know people probably missed him this chapter, but hey, it’s supposed to be a Naruto-centric fic). Meanwhile, I have every intention of turning this story into an epic with a full plot, so I’m changing the story description to something more concrete.
See ya next time! Wish me luck on finals!
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The World Was All Before Him