uthor's Note: Three part series that is already complete but I really want people to soak up the each segment and its evolution. Please, in all honesty let me know your opinion on each segment and then as whole at the end. ~KK

Pairing: Itachi/Sasuke/Kagome/Naruto

Warnings: Incest, Violence and Sexual Themes

Part I

A Pair of Crows:

The Uchiha Brothers

Wage your war
Another soldier, says he's not afraid to die
Well I am so scared
In slow motion, the blast is beautiful
Doors slam shut

I could do almost anything to you...

—Somewhere a Clock is Ticking

They could not remember a time without her.

Kagome was, after all, a mother's whisper, the kick beneath flesh, the cherub baby, the clumsy toddler, the ever present meek child, the elusive dark- eyed preteen, the strange gangly teenager, the silent archer, the silk laden priestess, the bloodless woman . . .

Sasuke had been born in the summer, Itachi four years prior, Kagome the following. . .

Sasuke had been too young to know otherwise and Itachi had always said that he felt her before she was even a thought in their mother's world.

The three spent their first years in the compound: a gilded cage and a wolves den.

They walked amongst their kin with dark hair, dark eyes and midday shadows when the sun shone its fiercest against their backs; like a trivet of crows perched on a dead willow.

Kagome hardly spoke.

So, they learned for her and it was with fire on their tongues and lips that they, her brothers, spurned the world far, far away.

Bonds formed, knotted and twisted until they threatened to strangle, throttle and asphyxiate. . .

Restlessness grew and Itachi was the first to venture out.

…

brother means love. only brother love. love your brother.

…

The weasel traveled far and wide; returned with eyes that petrified the two little whelps back at the den. He returned with claws drenched, smothered and splattered . . .

Itachi took their fear as an acrid salt, a bitter reality and the realization of how tender a prey they were.

He taught Sasuke all he knew; poured into him all the spilt blood, corpses' ash, graves' mud. . .

He molded his shy smiles and blushing-cherry cheeks into white steel and dead coal eyes. He took his clumsy, plump baby hands and turned them into long tapered things; things that traipsed about a sword's hilt and a kunai like a well beaten path carved into the mountainside. He took baby fat and melted it into hard, disciplined muscle. He took his gentle amble and ingrained silence into his footsteps.

Mercy did not exist in this world.

"Only one deserves to live more than you, Sasuke," Itachi had said and turned his brother's head to the gangly child at the brook's edge. Kagome had been fascinated with a newt but was too frightened to touch its slick, obsidian skin. "Everyone else deserves no hesitation." He pushed a sheathed katana into Sasuke's calloused split hands. "Even me."

…

brother means love. only brother love. love your brother.

…

Sasuke became his shadow. The fluttering hawk brimming with potential took flight. Itachi welcomed him into the ranks of ANBU. The weasel lurking in the shadows surfaced.

They became a pair of crows.

They traveled, they plundered, they grew . . .

In this war-torn world, they carved out a bloody hollow of peace. It was small, it was tender, it was precious and it was there Kagome resided.

And it was in their absence, Kagome's heart wandered.

Author's Note: I ask everyone to keep an open mind. Next segment will be up tomorrow. ~KK