Apprehension, a naruto fanfic

GM: Okay, so… this was actually pretty spontaneous n.n aaaaand it um, was inspired by two things; one the drabble "Tracing Lines" by tsubaki-hana, and two, some fanart I found awhile ago that can be viewed here- i109 . photobucket . com/albums/n69/ryoko_kitsune/naruto%20pics/untitled . jpg

Until just a few hours ago this pairing never even occurred to me, but Ive always really liked fics dealing with Itachi and Mikoto, so it all makes sense [I guess]. Yeah… also the first time Ive ever written anything hetero in nature xD

Warnings: Incest, mild sexual content

Disclaimer: Not mine, no profit made yatta, yatta…

She was such a delicate woman. That was a large part [at least, he thought] of why he couldn't help touching her. The backs of his knuckles slid dryly along her face, a delicate gesture in and of itself. Her soft arms and gentle visage, they evoked in him his own form of delicacy.

Mikoto tried very hard. Not that anyone could actually tell. Fugaku had long ago lost the ability to sense his wife's unease. Or, rather, he had deliberately ignored it for so long that, at some point, he forgot it existed. Sasuke was just a child and too caught up in his own unfortunate destiny, a destiny which didn't particularly include his mother. And the other Uchiha weren't at all close enough to the main house to notice anything unusual about its mistress.

She always sort of knew, though, that Itachi was aware of it. When she was younger and he was still a child, she worried that he would ask her in the curiously innocent fashion that children do, why it was that she was quite so unhappy. He never did, though more than dissuading her belief that he knew, it reinforced it. There was something in the quiet way he rose each morning, the part of his hair, the measure of his gait- as she watched her first son mature it was like watching the hand of a clock as it slowly, methodically moved upwards towards the top of the face, only- there was the unsettling sensation that it would just stop. At the top, never to reach the one or the three or the six ever again.

And then he would turn and catch her gaze. The moment where he should have smiled lightly and said good morning [because that's what sons and mothers and fathers do], instead he would stare, no smile, no glint of recognition. Mikoto always looked away, and then offered him her own greetings and pleasantries, trying to understand the strangeness she felt towards her own child.

Fugaku often left on important business trips. Being the head of the clan he held many responsibilities. Every now and then he would bring Mikoto with him, and she would wear her finest clothes and spend painstaking hours each morning arranging her hair into a perfect picture of elegance. During such occasions she was never allowed to pitch in with her own opinions; she was merely a part of her husbands immaculate personage. But it didn't bother her so much, because when they were alone, and her hair was down and he sat watching her brush it over and over, it was her opinion that he weighed most heavily. Not that the clan elders where aware of it, but most of the more important decisions regarding their shinobi and politics and schooling were decided by her.

But he only brought her with him so often. And even then, there was still a distance between them, like two very wise men who are wise enough to consider and agree upon one another's opinions, but still human enough to resent that such interactions are necessary.

When Sasuke was born he stopped bringing her altogether. At first she thought she would miss that dutiful, often painstaking part of her life, but in time she grew to appreciate the days spent as the head of her own house. It's not that she disliked her husbands presence, but during the times when he was gone, she allowed herself a quiet reprieve from smiling and laughing and speaking when she didn't really want to.

In that way perhaps she did have something in common with Itachi.

It was during one of her husbands longer absences that he first awakened her. His presence was unobtrusive and calculating, the exact opposite of what she would later imagine such a person in his position should have been.

He sat on the edge of her bed, the weight of his body shifting the blankets was what actually woke her up. In the darkness she knew who it was, even though she couldn't even see the outline of his form; there was that careful, inhuman objectivity to him that was the only thing she could feel through their bond as mother and child. Confusion swelled in her stomach and she had the strangest compulsion to roll away from him- her mind insisted that at any moment he would sit upon her waist and refuse to move until she died.

"Itachi-kun, what are you doing in here?" She tried to make out his face, as though to gauge his response.

When he spoke, his voice [the voice of a child that was never a child] was so soft and controlled that it seemed to carry no inflection of age or gender, let alone such an uncontrollable passion.

"I wanted to know what it would feel like to kiss you."

The words stopped something inside of her. Their fatalistic meanings were clear at once, but it took her mind several seconds to understand them on even the most basic level.

"You should be in bed," she wanted to make her voice sound like it should, but there was a weakness in it, an unnatural keening that verged on the sound a robin might make if all of its eggs where broken.

"You should be in bed."

His hands rested on her face, holding her cheeks and they were so small and they felt right because they were the same temperature as her skin and somewhere, deep, deep inside of her, where even she couldn't find, something whispered that they were perfect because he was a part of her and she had created him.

She couldn't sit up to meet his frightening sentence, so he leaned down to press his lips against hers. Warm and soft.

The intimacy of it made her want to cry and clutch him close to her and fall asleep with him in her arms. He left without saying anything else, and then she did cry because she couldn't remember the last time she had even touched him.

Itachi returned to her room almost every night that Fugaku was gone. At first it was to wake her with placid kisses and mild hands, but after a few months he stopped waiting for her to fall asleep, instead following her straight into the room. And at first she protested, trying to tell him that it was wrong, immoral, as though he were really her naïve son in need of teaching. He would gaze at her so calmly [and grab the hands that tried to push him away] and use a force both overpowering and supremely gentle to draw her to him. She felt so helpless, like a child in his arms, there was something in his eyes that confused her and made her forget why she should be struggling.

He pressed hot kisses along the pale stretch of her collarbone, her neck. She could have been a geisha with such a beautiful neck. He kissed the skin on her wrists, so thin that he could taste the blood as it coursed with an increasing intensity. He kissed the slender stretch of each thigh, and noted the look of pain on her face, the way her eyes closed and drew together, her mouth bent into an unhappy little shape.

Her heart beat like a rabbits, so quick at times that he had to lay upon her and breathe across her chest and trace wide, smooth patterns to calm it. And she would calm, and lean over and crush her lips against his as his hand rested at the base of her breast.

It wasn't long before she grew accustomed to waking next to him in the mornings, cradled in the crook of his arm, and that was how Fugaku found them, as Itachi silently counted each of his fathers steps to the room.

The man was, understandably, furious. And disgusted. He didn't really believe it at first, but Mikoto's stammering and blushing and ,finally, weeping, removed any doubt he might have had.

He grabbed Itachi by the wrist and literally threw the boy from the room, so overwhelmed in his shock and rage that he could do nothing but pace and breathe heavily for several long minutes. When he turned to Mikoto and demanded an explanation, she only sobbed harder and hid her face behind her hands. When he grabbed her roughly by the shoulders and yelled, spit flying from his open mouth, she buried her face in his chest and tried to hold onto him.

He pushed her away and left the room, left the house, left the entire Uchiha compound. Sasuke stood in her doorway, timidly clutching to the frame as he watched her weep. When Itachi came up behind him, he turned to his brother and said "Why is Kaasan crying?"

Nothing was ever really the same after that. Itachi had always known, Mikoto tried too hard. He had always been able to see through the veneer she so carefully constructed- and now he had torn it down- now everyone could see.

His father never spoke to him about it, and Sasuke never knew what had really happened. Maybe- maybe if they had had more time to sort things out- but Itachi would never have allowed for that. And besides, he himself wasn't given much time to accomplish it. He figured, before they had to die, he'd fulfill at least one craving. And he'd wanted to know what it would be like, how they would react.

Humans do very well with routines, they build and tear down the entire world each day with their monotonous perceptions. He figured, if it all had to end, he might as well destroy that.

It was one of the many things which always bothered him. And Mikoto, with her trembling girlish hands and bloodless lips, she knew in the last moment [she always knew] that that was what was wrong about him.