[A/N: Just to let you know, this story starts a few months after the last proper chapter of Cruel World, but only a short time after its epilogue, so around midsummer. Also, thank you to my beta-er, Rose202!]

Chapter 1:
Fugaku sighed as he signed a paper and set it aside. He had been putting off his paperwork for more pleasant things for several months, but it had finally caught up with him—literally this time. A chuunin from the police department had come running after him as he toured the compound that morning and handed him a stack of papers large enough to keep him busy for days. While Fugaku understood the necessity of getting it done, there were many things he would rather be doing, most prominent of which being spending time with Itachi and Sasuke.

Sasuke had left that morning as usual to train with his team, but Fugaku wasn't exactly sure where Itachi had gotten to. Fugaku hadn't heard anything from where he was in the office, but that didn't mean much since Itachi could be almost completely silent without even realizing it.

Suddenly feeling the urge to reassure himself of Itachi's safety, Fugaku pushed his papers aside and headed out of the office. "Itachi?"

Itachi was not in the house, which was a little surprising but not yet cause for alarm. While Itachi was rarely confident enough to leave the house by himself, he had once or twice and Fugaku had tried to encourage him to continue to do so. However, when he failed to find Itachi at Shisui's home—the other place he usually ended up at—Fugaku began to think that something could be wrong.

An exhaustive search through the rest of the compound came up with nothing. Fugaku was about to see if he might have gone to the training field where Sasuke and his team were when he passed his own house and saw a familiar figure sitting on the porch.

"Itachi!" Fugaku said in relief, running over to the house. "What have you been doing? I've been all over looking for you!"

"I'm sorry, Otou-sama, please forgive me," Itachi replied quietly.

Fugaku mentally chided himself for triggering Itachi's overly sensitive guilt complex. "That's all right, Itachi," he said quickly. "It's just that you worried me—what is that?" he finished, noticing the furry bundle that Itachi was holding.

"Well...it's..." Itachi began vaguely, holding out what Fugaku recognized as a cat. Said cat, not seeming at all pleased at the way Itachi was now holding it, squirmed and pawed at Itachi's hands until he set it down on the porch, but did not sprint away as Fugaku would have expected a stray to do.

"Where did you find it?" Fugaku asked, kneeling down on the porch and reaching out to pet the cat, which was now curled up against Itachi's side. He pulled his hand back just in time as the cat hissed and swiped at him.

"No, you have to be nice to Otou-sama!" Itachi said firmly, picking up the cat again. "Oh, I found it under the east storehouse," he added, remembering Fugaku's question. Fugaku could tell that Itachi wanted to say something else, but he stopped himself in the middle of the first word and turned away to keep petting the cat.

"You can keep it, if you like," Fugaku said, guessing what Itachi's request would have been. Itachi could almost never bring himself to actually ask for anything, so Fugaku had improved quickly in deducing those sorts of things. It was still troubling to him that Itachi was so dependent; maybe having a pet would help.

"Really?" Itachi said, sounding as if he didn't quite believe it.

"Of course," Fugaku replied. "Here, bring it inside."

Once the cat was brought inside and fed, it only took a few scratches for Fugaku to figure out that it was horribly ill-tempered. Strangely enough, it did seem to like, or at least tolerate, Itachi. Fugaku wasn't sure whether that was a good sign or bad. Itachi himself was actually rather catlike, Fugaku realized upon consideration, so maybe that explained some of it.

After Itachi promised to stay in the house with 'Neko-san,' as the cat had been temporarily dubbed, Fugaku attempted to make some more progress on the paperwork that had taken over his office. However, he didn't get very far. If he had rushed, he would have made more progress, but he had never been one to do less than his best work, even in a task such as this, so he had only gone through four more reports when he heard the front door bang open.

"Otou-san, I'm back!" Sasuke called from the entry. "I've got something I'm supposed to show you!"

Sighing a little, Fugaku resigned himself to the fact that at this rate the paperwork would take two or three months to complete and headed back into the front of the house.

"Where'd the cat come from, Nii-chan?" Sasuke was saying as Fugaku walked in.

"Sasuke, I wouldn't—" Fugaku said quickly, but he was too late as Sasuke reached out to pet the cat and failed to pull his hand away in time.

"Ow!" Sasuke yelped.

"Sorry, Sasuke-san," Itachi said quickly, picking up the cat and holding it tightly. "Neko-san won't do it again," he added, glancing guiltily at Fugaku.

Fugaku could still remember the cat that Mikoto's parents had owned. Mikoto had adored it, and it tolerated her (and occasionally other people, when they were useful or holding food). For some reason it had made Fugaku its target during the entirety of his and Mikoto's courtship. Fugaku didn't believe that this cat would turn out any differently, but he wasn't about to let Itachi know that. If Itachi figured out that they didn't like the cat, he would probably get rid of it no matter how much he himself wanted to keep it.

"We're ninjas, Itachi," he pointed out. "I'm sure we can deal with a cat." Considering the training most Konoha genin received in their dealings with the infamous Tora, this was true in more ways than one. "What did you have to show me, Sasuke?"

"Oh, right," Sasuke said, ceasing his rueful inspection of the scratches on his hand and pulling a folded paper out of his pocket. "Kakashi gave it to us this morning. We need to get someone to sign it, since we'll be leaving the village."

Fugaku scanned the paper, but didn't need to look any farther than the first lines. "It's time for the Chuunin Exams again already?"

"Yes, so won't you sign it, please?"

Fugaku frowned thoughtfully. "The Exams are dangerous." Even more so this time around, since they were being held in Iwa. It had been several years since the war, but feelings still ran hot when Konoha and Iwa ninja ran into each other, even during a time of truce such as the Chuunin Exams. A Konoha genin team could probably expect to be made a target, and as injury and accidental death were commonplace during the Exams nothing would be done about it.

"Oh, come on!" Sasuke wheedled. "Kakashi said we're good enough. We've even been on an A-ranked mission!"

Both of these statements were true. Kakashi had a tendency to be a little overly ambitious, as this was the first team he was mentoring. However, the fact that Team 7 had come through a post facto A-ranked mission and survived probably meant that they could at least do the same for the Exams.

"All right," Fugaku said. "Go find me a pen."

Just as he was sitting down at the kitchen table to sign the papers, there was a knock on the door. At this rate, Fugaku would never get anything done. "Itachi, could you go see who that is?" he asked, starting to sign his name only to discover that the pen was out of ink. "And Sasuke, go get another pen."

Sasuke returned with a new pen as Itachi came back into the room with the visitor.

"Kaito-san!" Fugaku exclaimed in surprise, taking a few seconds to sign the entry form before standing. "How did you manage to get away? You were still cloistered in the evidence room when I left; you couldn't have catalogued everything this quickly."

Kaito shrugged. "None of it is particularly hot, so I might as well sort it tomorrow as today. Also, I had the impression that you had some paperwork you wanted to be distracted from...?"

"I wouldn't quite put it that way," Fugaku said.

"Nevertheless, you need distracting, and I would be glad to provide that service," Kaito said blithely, seating himself at the table opposite Fugaku. "You might start by making lunch."

Fugaku sighed. Kaito was still as facetious as he had been when they were both younger and he had been giving Fugaku advice (usually very bad) on how to impress girls—Fugaku had always ended up providing lunch then as well. Still, Kaito was usually good company. "All right," Fugaku said, "but you need to get Shisui to start cooking for you one of these days."

"Shisui?" Kaito laughed. "He's busier than I am." At this point, Kaito noticed the new addition to Fugaku's household. "Hey, where'd that come from?" he asked. "I thought you swore you'd never—"

"Ssh!" Fugaku hissed. He wasn't sure where Itachi was (he and Sasuke had both wandered off after the grown-ups started talking), but he didn't want him to find out that Fugaku didn't like cats. "If you must know, Neko-san is a special case. Now, since you invited yourself over so suddenly, I'm not going to make anything fancy."

...

Fugaku wasn't sure how it worked, but whenever he started cooking for anyone outside his immediate family, other people promptly started turning up. By the time he had finished fixing lunch there were six visitors and a general festive atmosphere. Itachi was nowhere to be seen, having probably holed up somewhere with Neko-san to avoid the strangers. Sasuke had also left, presumably to wherever Itachi was.

"So, how is Itachi getting along?" Akira asked after Fugaku had finished handing out plates of tempura. After Fugaku's partial retirement to care for Sasuke, Akira was the highest ranking active-duty police officer, as well as uncontested king of breakroom Go. "I saw him poking around one of the storehouses earlier—have you managed to get him to leave the house?"

"I've been trying, but nothing much came of it until this morning," Fugaku replied. "He brought a stray cat home."

"You know how that's going to end," Haruto, one of the up-and-coming forensics personnel, began. "My Toshiko brought a puppy home from the Academy last year. Now she has three, not to mention six turtles and the koi that she's keeping in a wading pool in the cellar."

Fugaku shrugged. "I can't say I'd exactly mind, if it was good for him."

"Sure, you can say that now, but wait until you try to get out a plate and grab a turtle instead."

"Have you thought about putting him on a team?" Kaito asked, rescuing Fugaku from the necessity of replying to Haruto's statement.

"I've considered it," Fugaku said. "But he would hardly belong on a beginner team, and none of the more advanced teams have openings." And honestly, although he wasn't about to say so, he worried that Itachi's lack of communication skills would get him in trouble if he had to interact with anyone outside his immediate family and the one or two other individuals he occasionally dared to approach. Itachi's passive, timid personality could easily be misinterpreted, especially in the sort of situations a ninja team would inevitably get into.

"Inuzuka Tsume's team is looking for a third member," Obito interjected quietly. "They...lost one in the Chuunin exams last year."

Fugaku could remember hearing something like that, and promptly began worrying about what could happen to Sasuke and his teammates again. They were so young to be in such a high-stakes struggle. Tsume's three had been relatively experienced.

"I could hardly go up to her and ask if she would consider Itachi as a replacement," Fugaku pointed out. Tsume would not take that well, and when Tsume did not take something well it was always unpleasant for whoever she took it from.

Obito nodded. "I could ask Kakashi to make inquiries, if you were interested. He might be able to get something done..."

Before Fugaku could reply, the door opened and Itachi entered, carrying a very heavy-looking tray. "Itachi, you really shouldn't—" Fugaku began, as Itachi knelt and began to hand out cups of tea. Itachi started to look hurt, and Fugaku quickly backtracked, something that he had been getting better and better at lately. "—it looks wonderful, though. Thank you."

Itachi smiled silently and continued handing out tea as Fugaku sighed with relief that he'd managed to skirt an unpleasant episode yet again. Trying to navigate Itachi's sensitivities could be harrowing at times.

Due to Itachi's submissive mannerisms, long hair, and preference for loose clothing, there was some confusion among those who had never heard him speak—therefore most of the population of Konoha—as to whether Fugaku's elder child was a boy or a girl. Fugaku had never attempted to do anything about this, since he preferred to keep Itachi out of the public eye as much as possible, and the less known about him the better. If he were ever to attempt to put him on a team, however, he might have to change that policy.

Before the tea was gone, the conversation had meandered off of the subject of families and to another topic that ninjas, especially those affiliated with clans, loved discussing: politics.

"Think there's much chance of Danzou retiring anytime soon?" Haruto asked after a few minutes.

Akira half-laughed. "Him? He's probably going to die before retiring, and that will most likely take another ten years or so, worse luck."

Danzou was one of the greatest barriers for peaceful relations between the Uchiha and the rest of the village. While some of his accusations had been true a couple of decades ago, a more honest man would have given up this vendetta by now. Whether or not he actually believed what he was saying was somewhat ambiguous at this point, but it was still damaging.

"I must say, we'd certainly all be a lot better off without Danzou around to get in the way," Fugaku remarked as Itachi took his empty teacup. "Pity we can't do anything about it."

Once all the tea was gone, Itachi quietly stacked the teacups back on the tray and slid the door open to leave. "No, Neko-san, you can't go in there," Fugaku heard him say just after the door closed. "They're busy."

If it would help Itachi to talk more, Fugaku would be willing to put up with any number of pets. Sasuke would probably not share this opinion (he and Itachi were still in the same room) but at least he hadn't complained yet.

[A/N: Now I'm getting ideas for a cutesy story about Fugaku and Mikoto's courtship...]