[A/N: Just so you know, the angst-bucket got dumped pretty early in this story, and it splashed everywhere (seriously, there's a puddle by my chair. I should go get the mop...). Oh, and Itachi and Sasuke are twelve and seven here.]

Chapter 1: Hide-and-go-Seek

"Nii-san, come train with me!"

Itachi reached down to brush his little brother away, without looking away from the ANBU report he was working on. Hyuuga Kotone had been injured while on a mission with his team, and he would have to choose his wording very carefully to placate the rest of her clan. "Not now, Otouto-chan, I'm busy."

Sasuke refused to relenquish his hold on Itachi's shirt. "But Nii-san, you're always busy," he protested.

Itachi tried again. "I'll train with you tomorrow."

"And you always say that, too."

"Look, Sasuke, I—" Itachi sighed. "I'll train with you as soon as I'm done with this report, okay?"

"It'll be too dark by then," Sasuke said despondently, slowly letting go as he turned away. "I'll go train by myself."

As the door closed behind Sasuke, Itachi tried to continue work on the report. However, after crossing out the same sentence three times, he gave up and leaned back to rest his eyes. His gaze lit upon a leather holster of kunai—neatly sorted according to the official handbook's specifications—but he firmly told himself that he had far too many things to do to be distracted. Returning to the report, he struggled through the problem sentence after crossing it out twice more, then found himself stuck on the next one.

Itachi hated all the polite code-words he had to use for things like this. All they did was muddy up the issue and prevent it from being properly resolved. After tortuously making his way through another half-paragraph, he decided that anything would be better than this, even the inevitable reprimand for turning in a late report. Kakashi was always reprimanded for that, but it didn't seem to faze him. Then again, he hadn't inherited the perfectionism that usually went with the Sharingan.

The holster of kunai continued to tempt him. Finally giving in, Itachi stood and picked it up. While battling the report had seemed to take hours, he was fairly sure it had only been a short time since Sasuke left. It wouldn't take long to catch up with him.

...

A few minutes later, Itachi was perched in a tree overlooking Sasuke's favored training spot—an out-of-the-way field outside the village proper. While Itachi knew that their father didn't like it when Sasuke left the village, he made sure he never found out about this.

Sasuke was standing at one end of the field, angrily hurling shuriken at the poor, defenseless targets at the other end. Clearly he had not taken Itachi's rejection well.

"You're standing too stiffly," Itachi said critically, dropping silently to the ground behind Sasuke. Startled, Sasuke whirled around and nearly threw a shuriken at Itachi before recognizing him. "Nii-san!" he shouted, dropping the weapon and running up to hug his brother. "You came after all!"

Itachi laughed and let Sasuke's play-tackle bring him to the ground. "I figured you could use all the help you could get," he teased, poking Sasuke's forehead.

"I'm getting lots better," Sasuke retorted, swatting Itachi's hand away with false anger. "Here, I'll show you!" He bounced up and retrieved his discarded handful of shuriken. Carefully readying three between his fingers, he concentrated intensely as he brought his hand back and whipped it forward in a clean throw, embedding the shuriken in three adjacent targets. None of them were centered, and indeed one was barely clinging to the edge, but it was an excellent performance for a seven-year-old who had only started in the Ninja Academy a little more than a week before.

"How was that?" Sasuke asked eagerly as he darted back to where Itachi was still laying in the grass. "Shisui-san showed it to me."

"That's very good," Itachi assured him, reaching out to fluff up Sasuke's hair. "I have a better idea for training, though. Have they taught you how to mask your chakra yet?"

Sasuke nodded. "Iruka says I'm the best in the class at it. Of the boys, anyway."

While a little curious as to which of the girls in Sasuke's class was better than he was, Itachi didn't ask. "Well, that's what we're going to work on," he said. "You mask your chakra and find somewhere to hide, and then I'll see if I can find you."

"So you want to play Hide-and-Go-Seek," Sasuke clarified.

"Well, yes, but ninja training Hide-and-Go-Seek."

Sasuke laughed as he scrambled to his feet. "Make sure you count to fifty!" he shouted before running off.

...

"Forty-seven...forty-eight...forty-nine...fifty!"

Itachi opened his eyes and looked around, not that it did any good. Sasuke had hidden himself expertly. Activating the Sharingan, Itachi began to track his brother's chakra signature. The trail was very faint; if they had not been related, Itachi probably would not have been able to follow it.

Sasuke had headed circuitously through a few adjacent training fields, and Itachi was beginning to suspect he was trying to get back into the village. Climbing into one of the trees, Itachi looked around. Sasuke was nowhere to be seen, and Itachi was about to drop to the ground and continue tracking when Sasuke's chakra signature suddenly dropped off sharply before stopping entirely.

Instantly, Itachi was on the alert. He had been on enough ANBU missions to be able to tell immediately when something had gone wrong, and this was it. Hopefully, Sasuke had only fallen and knocked himself out; Itachi couldn't bring himself to think about the other possibilities. There were so many places where a small child could have an accident...

Their game was working against him now. Although Itachi had been able to find a general direction before losing Sasuke's chakra, he couldn't tell how far he had gone, and there was always the chance that he had been carried off. After the attempted kidnapping of Hyuuga Hinata three years before, all the clans with bloodline limits had been even more protective of their children. Father would be furious to find out Itachi had taken Sasuke outside the village, let alone lost him there.

Just as abruptly as it had vanished, Sasuke's chakra reappeared in full. Sighing with relief, Itachi quickly had a fix on it. There was a strange edge to it, however, perhaps as if Sasuke had been injured? Itachi hurried to where the chakra was coming from.

He found himself in one of the more remote training fields. This one actually had not been used in some time, and the tall grass and rampant weeds hid many stray weapons. "Sasuke?" Itachi called quietly. There was no answer, and Sasuke was nowhere in sight. Frowning, Itachi looked around again. "Sasuke!"

A twig snapped behind him, and Itachi whirled around. "There you—"

Blood and fire burning bright under a red moon screams and blood raining on tattered rice paper windows...

—Itachi gasped in dismay as the images seared into his brain. A small part of him was saying that they weren't real, they couldn't be, but they were just as vivid as his own memories had ever been.—

...flight was useless angel of death hunting through the streets why was his sword covered in blood stains on tatami mats Mother Father what was happening where was Sasuke Sasuke don't come in NO!

Itachi screamed.

It seemed to be hours before the horrible genjutsu dissipated and he found himself back in the training field again, gasping for breath in the cold evening air. His back was pressed against a tree, and when he tried to move he found that something was coiled around him, hissing when he pushed against it. A snake summons; but Orochimaru had defected years ago, and he was the only person Itachi knew of who had used snake summons.

"It's hard to do twice, isn't it?"

Itachi tried to get a look at his assailant but could see nothing but the red swirls of the Sharingan. "What have you done with my brother?" he demanded. Sasuke's chakra was still gone, and if someone had been able to defeat an elite ANBU that easily, who knew what he could have done to an Academy student?

"You say that as if you care," the other scoffed. "You should be more worried about yourself rather than Sasuke." While Itachi still couldn't see clearly, he could discern the dark sillhouette pacing back and forth in front of him. There was possibly something familiar about his stance, but Itachi couldn't quite place it.

"I don't understand," Itachi said. If he could get his attacker talking he might be able to learn more.

"Really?" the other laughed scornfully. "Well, perhaps you wouldn't...not yet."

Itachi could see the other more distinctly now, but it didn't help much. It was no one he recognized, and he already knew he was an Uchiha, or at least had the Sharingan. He was older than Itachi; perhaps Shisui's age. "Who are you? What do you want?" The snakes began to coil tighter around him, and he gasped as the breath was forced out of his lungs.

The other seized Itachi's hair roughly, and he winced as his head was slammed back against the tree. "I did want to kill you," the other said quietly, with a smile that was somehow wrong, "but I think I've had a better idea."

Itachi just caught a glimpse of the last rays of the setting sun glinting off a kunai, then everything fell into blood and darkness and screams that seemed to come from far, far away.

...

At first, Itachi didn't realize he was awake. Everything was still dark.

However, the air smelt bitingly of medicine and disinfectant, and there was something beeping steadily and mechanically off to his right.

The hospital. The mission must have gone wrong if he'd ended up in the hospital. But he hadn't been on a mission...had he?

Sasuke. Training with Sasuke. Losing him, the abandoned training field, the snakes, blood and fire and the other...the memories slowly sorted themselves out.

He considered trying to move, but the mere thought of it hurt. His entire body ached horribly, and there was a burning pain behind his bandaged eyes. What was most disturbing, however, was that he couldn't feel any of his chakra at all.

Footsteps echoed in the hall, nearing his room. The door creaked, and he could hear the voices belonging to the footsteps, although his aching head had trouble sorting out the words. One of the two voices he thought he recognized as a nurse he had encountered a few times. The other was his father.

Itachi couldn't imagine explaining what had happened to Sasuke, so he hoped his father wouldn't be able to tell he was awake. The beeping of the machine next to his bed prevented his hearing more than half the conversation.

"...ten days," the nurse said quietly. There was a metallic clink against the end of the bed.

"How long..." his father began, then turned away, making Itachi miss the rest of the sentence.

"Don't be a fool," the nurse replied sharply, and loud enough for Itachi to hear her clearly. "He'll never be a shinobi again."

...

[A/N: This story is probably going to update very slowly because it's pretty hard to write. Also, thanks muchly to my beta, vanelo159!]