Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto or any of its characters.

Fragility

"Nii-san?" Itachi looked up from his scroll at the sound of the quiet, tentative question. Sasuke was standing at the other end of the porch, holding something in his cupped hands. The younger boy's lower lip was trembling and his eyes were gleaming-it was obvious to Itachi that he was trying very hard to hold back tears.

"What's wrong, Sasuke-kun?"

Sasuke hurried over and thrust his hands out toward his brother. Laying in them was a crow, clearly dead.

"I found it in the backyard, nii-san. Can you make it better?" Sasuke's wide eyes gazed up at Itachi with absolute trust.

Itachi looked around for their parents, as explaining the concept of death to a young child was a parent's job, but neither Fugaku nor Mikoto appeared to be present. And even if they had been, Itachi had a sneaking suspicion that Sasuke would still have brought the crow to him. He sighed. "Sasuke-kun...sometimes an animal that's hurt can't get better. Sometimes it dies, and no one can fix something that's dead."

"Not even you, nii-san?" The idea that there might be something his brother couldn't do was clearly an alien concept to Sasuke.

"No, Sasuke-kun, there are some things that even I can't fix."

Itachi sat on his bed, looking at the weapons arrayed around him. His ninja-to, freshly sharpened. An impressive assembly of kunai and shuriken. A stack of exploding tags. A collection of poison-laced senbon. Even for such a large clan as the Uchiha, there were more weapons here than he should really need, but Itachi was a firm believer in being prepared.

Looking around for the special holster he'd bought for the poisoned senbon, Itachi's eyes fell on an object that should not have been sitting at the foot of his bed. It was the small, green stuffed dinosaur that Sasuke had christened "Mr. Fluffy."

It was a lot harder to rationalize what he was going to do in twenty-four hours with this reminder of his brother's trust and innocence literally staring him in the face. The perfectly round black-button eyes reminded him of the wide-eyed look Sasuke got whenever his brother did something he considered particularly amazing (which occurred approximately once a day). He could imagine Sasuke giving him that same look, except with tears welling up in his dark eyes, and saying, "But nii-san, I don't understand! If the clan and the village are mad at each other, why can't you just fix it somehow? Why can't you convince them not to be mad at each other anymore?"

Itachi kicked out a leg and swept all the assembled weapons, plus the dinosaur, off his bed. Deadly bits of metal and bamboo (poisoned bamboo, no less, a dispassionate corner of his mind insisted on reminding him) scattered everywhere. He drew his knees up to his chest, rested his head on them, and wrapped his arms around his legs. He hadn't cried since he was four years old, but he didn't think he'd be able to hold the tears back now, and he could only hope they stayed silent enough to escape his parents' shinobi hearing.

No, Sasuke-kun, there are some things that even I can't fix.

Rain poured down, soaking Sasuke and washing the blood off the prone body of his brother. All his limbs were trembling, his muscles twitching uncontrollably. His knees buckled, and he collapsed to the ground next to Itachi.

Lying in the ruins of the old Uchiha stronghold, Sasuke saw something small and black fall to earth with a thud. A crow? He supposed it must have been killed by the heat or smoke from the fire that was consuming the surrounding forest.

He'd expected to feel triumphant when this moment came, to feel as though a great weight had been lifted from his shoulders.

He didn't.

This was supposed to fix things. By dying, Itachi was supposed to set right all the damage he'd done to Sasuke.

Sasuke was trying to stay conscious, but it wasn't working, and as his eyes slid shut, a memory drifted across his mind.

"No, Sasuke-kun, there are some things that even I can't fix."

A/N: I got the idea for this story after seeing a picture on DA by 1arty-ninja, titled "Crow." My writing has been "all Konan, all the time" recently, so it's refreshing to write something about other characters (but I'm still working on "Rain Falling on Flowers," don't worry!)