This story has been re-uploaded per the request of a reader that is very influential to me. As a re-uploaded story, minor fixes to wording, grammar, etc. will be made as I see fit. But please don't review this story saying, "This story is stolen!1!" It's not stolen, just reposted, and the old story's location will have the chapters taken down. The old story, however - albeit chapterless - will stay up, because the entire profile is a gravesite I visit every once in a while to remind myself of lessons I've learned. If you're old fans, thanks for still being around. I've grown a little as a writer, and that's what the minor fixes are for - to brush up on spots with new tricks I've picked up. So, anyways, here's the reuploading of:

The Family Business
Tycho Kouros

It was 12:03 in the morning when Sasuke finally stepped off the train from Berlin – sixty-three minutes late. The two soldiers at the checkpoint were probably still reeling from the verbal thrashing he'd given them for holding up his train just to spot check the travel papers of passengers on board. He would have been quicker to pull rank and tell them to fuck off, had it not been for...

"One more time – explain to me why you felt it necessary to intrude into my personal life and follow me all the way to Paris?" Sasuke asked, turning back to look at his silver-haired superior, who was busy eying a pair of women at the end of the terminal waiting on their train.

"Because, Sasuke – I find your personal life far more interesting than anything else going on in the world." he explained, to which Sasuke scoffed.

"Only you would find it more interesting to stalk me than pay attention to anything else going on, such as... you know, a war..." Sasuke could tell – the face beneath the man's mask was locked in a dismissive smile. It always was, and Sasuke found it annoying to no end. He walked, closely followed by the source of his aggravation, towards the station. A proper source of transportation would – should – be there to pick them up and take them to the hotel he'd made reservations at until a more permanent living arrangement could be acquired. Once through the crowds in the larger building and out in front of the building, however, he found that the transportation was far short of "proper" – it was a small cab, with a soldier leaning against the passenger door smoking a cigarette. As the two walked closer, he threw his cigarette on the ground and snapped to attention, greeting them with a salute.

"Colonel, Lieutenant."

"Corporal." Sasuke said, jaw clenched, flashing only a small resemblance to a salute. Kakashi, behind him, didn't even bother to return the salute – only waving a hand dismissively. The door was opened for them, the luggage they carried in their hands packed into the trunk. Kakashi had suggested they allow their luggage to be taken care of, but Sasuke refused. He wouldn't permit some slimy little peon to forget his suitcase on a street corner and lose all of his belongings. Kakashi, as usual, mocked his distrust of the incompetent.

"So when do you plan to meet him?" Sasuke breathed a deep, frustrated sigh. Kakashi had been asking him the entire train ride the same question, over and over again, not letting the subject drop for more than a few minutes at a time. He'd finally reached the end of his rope.

"If you must know, not that it's at all any of your business, I plan on going by his apartment some time tomorrow."

"And you haven't seen him since you were..."

"Eleven."

"Wow. Eight years? And you're only now trying to make contact with him?" Sasuke gritted his teeth and fixed a hard stare out the window, watching the streetlights flash by. "You two must have not gotten along, or else you would have – "

"Can we discuss this some other time?" Sasuke snapped, flashing his most lethal glare right into the only exposed eye of his mentor. Kakashi couldn't even have begun to understood how Sasuke felt. He'd never have understood how much Sasuke loved his brother, how much he depended on him, only to find that one day he'd had his parents send him to France to study, without even telling him goodbye. Sasuke had cried for days. He'd sent letters, he'd made phone calls, but his brother never bothered to return his attempts towards contact.

Finally, now a quickly rising soldier in the Schutzstaffel, one of the most successful descendents of the powerful Madara Uchiha, founder and leader of the Schutzstaffel, rocketing to a position where his father and grandfather would say his name with pride; at nineteen being on the path to becoming a son of the Uchiha clan, who would carry on and progress the Uchiha legacy – finally, a man with power, to throw around in a Nazi-occupied Paris, he could hunt his brother down and force him to explain himself. Sasuke didn't expect him to have a good enough reason to put him through so much pain. In such a case, he planned on bringing down all of his power to punish him for the betrayal, for the pain, for –

"Lieutenant?" Sasuke, broken from his thought, looked up, to find the driver waiting by the opened door. "We're here, sir."

Sasuke only grunted affirmation, grabbing his suitcase from the man's hand and walking quickly into the hotel lobby to check in.

It was one in the morning – an hour after he'd arrived in Paris. Though he'd gone hours without sleep, he found that, once unpacked and settled into his hotel room, he couldn't stop himself from hunting his down his prey when he was so close to what had taken him eight years to achieve. Shed of his usual uniform and dressed now in his favorite, most comfortable casual outfit – a tight black shirt, and a baggy pair of black pants with the family crest on the thigh of his left leg – he stood, the cab driving away, in front of a broken down building.

Sasuke checked the address on the worn slip of paper he'd clung to, opening and re-folding repeatedly, for the two weeks prior, against the address on of the building. It was an unnecessary act – Sasuke had by then memorized, taken deep into the recesses of his mind and heart, the address that was supposed to be the location of his brother. It was worlds away from the building Sasuke had assumed his brother was living in – no member of the Uchiha family, even a member studying abroad, would be so poor as to live in the kind of dirty, pathetic excuse for a hovel that he was standing in front of. Sasuke knew, however, that the records were accurate – they were Nazi records; meticulous, with a lethal accuracy down to the proper capitalization of name and minute of birth.

He walked up the stairs, entering the building with determination to find what he was looking for.

After minutes spent waiting on the elevator – until being informed by a tired, unkempt, elderly woman that the elevator had been broken for almost a year – he proceeded to climb the three flights of stairs it would take to reach apartment 3-A. The walls in the stairwell were, like the rest of the building, dirty – broken and crumbling. In one spot, the wall had been smashed through, and he could see the studs inside the wall. A passing glance down the hall of the second floor didn't do much to improve his opinion of the buildings, nor their residents – trash, broken furniture, even piles of broken beer bottles were the only decoration to the filthy, unlit hall. The third floor wasn't much better, and it took a powerful resolve not to cringe as he passed a rat gnawing on a piece of moldy cheese in an overturned garbage can as he mad his way down the hall.

Finally, at the end of the hall, he found apartment 3-A. The door was as dirty and discolored as the rest he'd passed – the only sign anything related to an Uchiha might possibly reside in the apartment was the trash can outside the door, which stood properly, with a lid, albeit a dented and beaten one, sitting on top to keep whatever kinds of life that lived in the metal container safely inside.

A sudden shock of reality flashed in Sasuke's mind – there he stood. In front of what he'd been searching for, what he'd been dreaming of finding for the past eight years. And, as confused as he was about the location, he was nonetheless resolved, anticipation coursing through his veins like an electric current, to get the answers he'd longed to get for years.

He raised his fist and pounding on the door – the heavy wood, sturdier than it seemed, exploding in loud thuds beneath his hand. The current peaked with a jolt as he heard rustling beyond the door. Locks clicked and the doorknob turned – and the door opened.

Standing before him, dirty and tired, his eyes puffy from sleep, dark rings beneath them, was Itachi – his unmistakable, though dirty, hair flowing down to his shoulders; his dark, Uchiha eyes staring back into Sasuke's. He could see the fog of sleep clearing from the man's vision, and dark eyebrows furrowing in confusion. The voice cracked, surprise lacing it.

"Sasuke?"

Before Sasuke knew what was happening, the soft flesh of lip was pressed, for just an instant, against his knuckles. As Itachi's face head snapped back from the punch, Sasuke pulled back his right hand, pressing forward to deliver with a blow to the man's gut with his left. He stopped as the body keeled forward, wrapping around his hand, before pulling his fist back and watching as the body sank down to its knees, Itachi panting hard to catch his breath. Sasuke's triggered nerves caught the sound of heavy footsteps, and he caught the form of a massive man standing in a doorway, the darkness of the room blurring the body's identity. Itachi quickly reached out a hand to stop the man, though, and after a moment of silence it disappeared back into the other room.

Itachi struggled to stand, blood pouring from his lip onto his chin. Arms opened up, and Sasuke found himself being held in an embrace, a hand pressing against the back of his head, pulling it onto a fragile shoulder. Sasuke could hear small sobs, and only then realized that he, too, was crying.

"I'm so sorry," the man's voice choked.

It was at that moment when Sasuke's broke, and found himself bawling into the neck of his brother, his arms wrapping around the other in a crushing embrace. The eleven year old inside him came pouring out as – just like he had during the teams before that day eight years ago – he cried in the arms of the person he loved most.

Sasuke sat on the couch – ratty, emitting an odd smell – turned slightly to face his brother, who sat in an even more worn armchair, small tears and countless stains in the upholstery. Itachi sipped on the glass of wine, Sasuke having passed on the glass of water he was offered – sure that it wasn't safe to drink, if the brown tint was anything to go by.

"Offering your guest filthy water while you drink wine?" Sasuke said, venom in his voice, though a very diluted venom from the emotional meltdown he'd just experienced. Tired eyes stared into his own, unapologetic.

"When the guest is you, then yes – I refuse to offer my nineteen year old brother alcohol, even if it's only wine." The warmth that spread through his chest at the thought of his brother knowing how old he was after eight years of absence was dampened by the question he was reminded of.

"Do you hate me?" Sasuke kept his eyes locked on the carpet – filthy, even despite the obvious attempts to clean it. His eyes widened as, in a single swift movement, his brother moved in a fluid motion from the armchair to the couch, pulling him into another embrace.

"Why would you ever think that?" Itachi whispered in his ear. Sasuke pushed him away, angry now.

"Why would I think that! You up and leave for another country without even telling me you were thinking about it, without even telling me goodbye, and you can't understand why I'd think that! Damn you!" Sadness flashed in the face in front of him.

"I don't know why I expected them to tell you." Sasuke was confused by the answer, cut short in his tirade to stare blankly at his brother. "I didn't just up and leave you, Sasuke. You were the first I thought of when I left. And I've thought of you ever since."

"Then why!" Sasuke's voice cracked as he asked, begged – shame flared in the back of his mind; to be Lieutenant in the Schutzstaffel, and to be crying like a baby, begging like a child! Itachi's expressionless face, his eyes cast down, avoiding contact.

"Tell me about yourself, Sasuke. How have you been?" The silence in the room echoed within Sasuke's body, as if it were hollow – it throbbed in his head, before finally giving way to rage.

"What! I sit here and ask you what possible reason you could ever have to explain why you would leave me, ALONE, and you dare ask me how I've been! Like you were making conversation with the baker when you're picking up your bread for the week!" The downcast eyes met his, and the hardness of determination in the black orbs drained him of his anger.

The two sat in silence. Before finally, Itachi spoke.

"I wanted to ease into it. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to seem insensitive."

Sasuke nodded, silent as he accepted the apology.

"Why did they tell you I'd left?" Again, the confusion from earlier seeped back into him.

"That you'd come to study here in Paris." Itachi scoffed, grabbing the wine glass he'd set on the table and chugging down the red liquid, before moving to refill the glass.

"Do I look like I'm studying?" Sasuke watched the anger flash across the face staring into the glass of swirling liquid.

"No, it looks like you're wasting the money Father sends you every month, but I can't possibly guess on what. It's certainly not on furniture or housing."

"Father doesn't send me money, Sasuke." Sasuke stared at him as he sat back down into the armchair.

"Of course he does. He told me he does." Long hair whipped lightly as Itachi shook his head.

"No, Father hasn't spoken to me since he sent me away." Every answer Sasuke got to a question, more questions seemed to grow.

"What do you mean, 'Sent you away'?" The distant look in Itachi's eyes returned. He took a long sip of wine.

"That's why I asked how you've been. I assume you joined the family business?"

"You mean the Schutzstaffel?" Itachi nodded, taking another sip.

"Call it what you want."

"Yes, of course I did. What does that have to do with anything?" Itachi didn't answer immediately, instead staring into his glass as he swirled the wine around.

"When I was sent away, I was 15. It was assumed I was to join when I was 16, like I'm sure you did. However, I disagreed. I felt a certain disgust, and still do, at the thought of joining the German war machine in the name of family honor. I didn't leave you, Sasuke. I was sent away. I was sent away by father, and Madara's order, so as not to embarrass the family when I refused to enlist. I didn't want to leave you, Sasuke." Sasuke watched as he downed the rest of the glass in a single gulp, standing, this time with a bit of a stagger, to head for the bottle and refill the glass once again. "I guess I was selfish in that. I spoke out against it because of what I wanted. I didn't think of the consequences." He headed once again for the arm chair, this time bringing the bottle with him, before he continued.

"I didn't think of you, Sasuke. And I didn't think that the consequences would be so swift in their execution. I didn't take into consideration that Madara would remove a glitch in his plan so swiftly, so completely. I didn't think of you, or that I'd never see you again for my decision. And for that, I'm sorry." Sasuke's chest felt as if it were crushing his lungs. Tears stung at his eyes as he watched his brother take another long sip of the wine.

"But what about the letters I'd sent you?" Itachi shrugged, his body beginning to get loose.

"Don't know. I highly doubt they made it very far. You could probably ask Madara, I'm sure he has them. If he didn't burn them. After my letters to you were rejected at the border and returned to me, I started to give up getting in contact with you. Apparently any form of attempt to contact you that came from France was censored."

Sasuke shook his head, standing.

"They wouldn't do that. You're lying."

Itachi stood as well, and Sasuke froze as he looked into his brother's glassy eyes – their focus hazy from the alcohol, tears beginning to slip from them and down onto his now reddened cheeks. Arms wrapped around Sasuke, and Itachi's weight pulled on him as the man's body, muscles loose from the wine, seemed to lean on him more than embrace him.

"I'm so sorry, Sasuke. Please. Forgive me." A hot, wet face pressed into the crook of his neck. Sasuke hugged him back – sitting down on the couch, pulling the body of his brother, now drunk, with him.

The door in the corner opened, and Sasuke turned to see the man from earlier standing in the doorway. His body was impressive – large, well-worked muscles dressed with a bluish-tinted skin visible in his shirtless state. He wore only a pair of black boxers, covering powerful thighs. The man moved back into the room, the open door a sign that he would soon return. When he came back and exited what appeared to be a bedroom, he was carrying blankets and pillows. He set them on the couch, next to the brothers, before giving a stern look to Sasuke and returning to the room, shutting the door this time.

Itachi, still holding him, was now snoring softly. Sasuke lowered their bodies further onto the couch, grabbing the pillow and adjusting it before maneuvering his brother so his head lay on it. Then Sasuke, his brother's arms keeping him close, lay his head on his brother's chest. When he closed his eyes to sleep, he felt this time as if a hole within him had been filled. He was in his brother's arms, eleven again, in bed with his brother – where nightmares wouldn't find him, where monsters couldn't get him. He was in his brother's arms – where he was safe.

Sasuke fell asleep not long after.