Chapter Text
Tsunade never wanted to be Hokage. Really, she detested such a thankless job. If she wasn’t broke from gambling all her money away, she never would have taken the job. Oh, yeah, Naruto also convinced her.
Dealing with the ninjas and the missions were the easiest part. Being a legendary Sannin really helps in getting respect from the Leaf ninjas. The more annoying part of the job was dealing with the village’s elders, Koharu and Homura. They claimed that they care about the village, but they truly didn’t care about its people.
Another clan that she didn’t care for dealing with was the Uchiha clan. Uchiha Sasuke never personally created any problems for her, but some of her best ninjas—Sakura, Naruto, and Kakashi—were connected with him. Then, one Uchiha Hinode showed up randomly and claimed that there were other Uchihas out there. She had not been back to the village long, but her demanding attitude already drove Tsunade up the wall.
And now, this Uchiha Shisui, the one that Hinode wanted to risk a bunch of lives to rescue, was in front of her in her office. He seemed giddy, smiling like a golden retriever wagging its tail. But his cat-like eye showed that he was cunning underneath the innocent smile.
Yes, eye. It seemed that he’d lost an eye through battle. He was wearing a black eyepatch over the missing eye.
“So you’re saying… you have Uchiha Itachi, the S-class rogue ninja,” Tsunade repeated what she thought she heard from the young man.
“That is correct, Lord Hokage,” said Shisui politely, a polar opposite of his sister.
“So where is he?” Tsunade repeated.
“I have him locked up in a cell at the old Police Force building,” Shisui beamed.
The Konoha Police Force was once an establishment Danzo pushed for to confine the Uchiha clan. Since the massacre happened, the building had been vacant. Even though the clan had fallen years ago, many villagers still didn’t dare go close to any of the Uchiha properties.
“Do you realize that that puts Konoha in danger?” Tsunade raised an eyebrow at him.
“On the contrary. I believe this puts us at an advantage,” said Shisui, smiling coyly. “The Akatsuki already have their eyes on Konoha. They were going to attack again sooner or later. With Itachi’s information on them, we can make the first move and take out the members. We mobilize the best of our shinobi, including Uzumaki Naruto, based on their abilities and destroy the threat all together.”
“Watch your tone, Uchiha Shisui!” Shizune stomped her foot down next to Tsunade. “Lady Tsunade is the one calling the shots here!”
“It’s all right, Shizune,” said Tsunade. “I like the idea of fighting back. But can we trust Itachi? He murdered your entire clan.”
“Yes, that is a sin that he cannot atone for even with his life,” Shisui dropped his smile. “I have no way of convincing you that Itachi can be trusted. I just know him better than anyone else, and I know that he won’t betray us again.”
Tsunade raised an eyebrow. “And by us, you mean…?”
“My sister and I,” Shisui answered.
Hinode led Team 8 back to Konoha by morning. The mission was a bust, but all members of the team were safe. Kurenai had been waiting at the gates to see her team’s return, and was delighted when the four of them arrived.
“Thanks for taking care of them, Hinode,” Kurenai said after hugging each one of her students.
A tingling cold ran up Hinode’s spine, but she gave Kurenai a smile.
The red-eyed Jonin asked Hinode if she wanted to join them for breakfast, and she declined, saying that she had to report back to Lady Tsunade. She had noticed since entering the gates that Sai had been hiding in an alley, waiting for her. She bid goodbye to her temporary team, and walked straight to where Sai had been.
“What have you been up to while I was gone?” Hinode asked the boy once she turned into the alley.
“Cleaning,” Sai replied. Hinode had given Sai the key to Yakko’s old house. It was dusty and full of cobwebs, but Sai was eager to clean the place up and restore Yakko’s old notes on Fuinjutsu. In a day’s time, Sai made the small house liveable again. He couldn’t have asked for a better living situation in a village where he didn’t really have anything.
Besides, he knew that Hinode hadn’t been spending her nights at the Uchiha compound. He just didn’t want her to think that he knew, because it would probably embarrass her.
“I thought Lady Tsunade was going to introduce you to some shinobi that are your age,” Hinode frowned.
“She did. I met the Ino-Shika-Cho trio,” said Sai.
“Oh! Ino, Shikamaru, and Choji!” Hinode smiled immediately. “I haven’t seen them in forever! Choji’s dad used to be my teacher, you know?”
Seeing that Hinode was eager to see some of her old students, Sai quickly said, “You might want to know that Shisui-san is back.”
“What?!” Hinode’s eyes popped.
“He brought Itachi back, too.”
“...What?!”
Being the eldest son of the former Chief of Police, Itachi had surprisingly never stepped foot inside the Police Force building. And he never would have imagined that his first time here would be inside a prison cell. When Shisui took him here, he thought that he would see the ghosts of his father and his men in the building, but there was nothing. It was just a quiet, dark place; even the front office.
Itachi sat in the middle of the cell with his eyes closed. He tried not to think about what was going to happen next. It had been a few hours since Shisui had left to speak to the Hokage. He did not even have anyone guarding him in the prison. It would have been easy for Itachi to break out of the cell, but he wasn’t going to. He didn’t even deserve to be alive, much less being here in Konoha.
The heavy door to the prison made a long creak. Shisui was back.
“Shisui! What happened to your eye?!”
Every muscle in Itachi’s body tensed up when Hinode’s voice reached his ears from the prison door. She wasn’t in the village when he and Shisui first arrived. He was relieved that she wasn’t at that time, because he wasn’t ready to see her. He wasn’t ready now.
“Nee-san!” He heard Shisui call out happily. “Don’t worry about my eye. The important thing is– we did it! He’s here!”
“Hinode, you’re back already?” said a female voice Itachi had not heard before. “Seeing as how you’re completely uninjured, I’m going to assume you didn’t encounter Orochimaru.”
A short conversation followed between Hinode and who sounded like the new Hokage. Then the footsteps began to sound closer and closer to him. At the same time, the sound of his heartbeat grew louder and louder.
When the clacking of shoes against wood came to a stop, Itachi finally opened his eyes. With the implantation of one of Shisui’s eyes, his vision had become clear again.
“Itachi…”
He knew that she was coming, but he still drew a sharp breath when he saw her.
The last time he’d seen her, she had been lying in a pool of her own blood. Her eyes and lips were slightly parted, but her pupils had lost their light and no air passed through her lips. He wanted to forget that image of her for so long, but memories of her smile never came. The image of her death haunted him every night.
Now she was standing before him, a hand softly on a metal bar. It wasn’t the smile he wanted to see. She looked down at him, lips pursed and brows furrowed. The skin of her eyelids and nose were beginning to turn red.
“Hinode-san…” He wanted to apologize, but it felt too cheap to say. Sorry was never going to be enough.
Her lips unpursed.
“You owe me fifty-thousand ryo,” she said.
Itachi blinked twice. What did she just say?
Someone stifled a laugh behind Hinode. It was a young lady who held a pig in her arms. A blonde woman smiled beside her.
“Hm? Shizune-san, what’s this about?” Shisui poked his head past the women to look at Itachi with an amused smile.
“Uchiha Sasuke damaged some Konoha property and we had Hinode pay for it,” Shizune said to Shisui, but it was loud enough for everyone to hear it.
Itachi finally stirred in his cell and straightened his back.
“I’ll pay you back,” he said earnestly, “For everything.”
It was like he was a kid again. Memories of a young Itachi emerged in Hinode’s head. Before the impending coup, before Danzo’s ploys, Itachi was just an earnest boy who looked up to Shisui and loved Sasuke. He was just a boy who yearned for Hinode’s approval.
“I’ll be waiting,” she replied, flashing a very faint smile before she turned away.
Hinode walked past the others quickly and out of the police department. Once she was outside, she took a deep breath of the fresh air by the mouth and exhaled through her nose. She had the urge to cry when she saw Itachi, but she couldn’t let anyone see that. It wouldn’t do Itachi any favors.
In just a few moments, the others caught up to her outside of the Police Force building, and Hinode had readjusted herself.
“Uchiha Itachi has agreed to cooperate with us to bring down Akatsuki,” Lady Tsunade was the first to speak. “I am trusting him for now, seeing his demeanor in front of the two of you. But the moment I suspect something, all three of you will have a price to pay.”
Shisui grinned sheepishly at the warning, “Understood.”
“Uchiha Itachi will continue to stay in prison at this time and aid us with intel only,” Lady Tsunade continued. “Visitations are allowed once a week.”
Lady Tsunade looked to Hinode, expecting some pushback, but the younger woman stayed quiet. Perhaps it was enough that, at the very least, two of her boys were back home. The Hokage softened slightly.
“You may report to me tomorrow morning regarding your mission,” Lady Tsunade said to Hinode, knowing that the siblings needed their reunion.
As Lady Tsunade and Shizune headed back to the Hokage’s office, Hinode quickly embraced Shisui. The younger brother’s face nestled into the older sister’s neck. Hinode then felt the smooth leather of his eyepatch on her skin.
“Shisui, your eye…”
“The short story is that I gave my eye to Itachi,” Shisui straightened and smiled at Hinode assuringly. “I’ll tell you the long story when we get home.”
Home–Hinode was glad to hear the word at first, but in the next second, she panicked. She hadn’t even been back to their house since she came back to Konoha. The house was probably so dusty and obviously inhabited. Shisui, as sharp as he was, would definitely notice and would definitely interrogate her on where she had been staying this whole time.
“Ah, I sure miss eating Nee-san’s home-cooked meals at our dinner table!” Shisui said dramatically as he started to make his way towards the Uchiha Compound.
Hinode laughed dryly as she lifted her stiff legs to follow him. She didn’t exactly know why she couldn’t just tell Shisui the truth, but it was something like a single mother bringing home a new man without warning. She was sure that Shisui knew about Kakashi because he was an ANBU captain back in the day, but she didn’t know what Shisui thought about him at all. She didn’t even know if Shisui knew that she and Kakashi were friends, much less… whatever they were. What would she even say if she was going to tell Shisui the truth?
She would at least need to establish something definitive with Kakashi before she could talk to Shisui. Then, only if Shisui was comfortable, could he meet Kakashi. Wait, he’d already met Kakashi before, just not as… whatever he was now.
Hinode felt her face flush and heartbeat accelerate. She wasn’t ready for this conversation. Not for at least a year or two.
She stayed a good five feet behind Shisui as they walked back home. She panicked more every step she took. Could she stall him somehow? She only needed an hour to make things look believably lived in. What would she tell him to do? Who were Shisui’s friends in Konoha? Before she could come up with an answer, they were in front of the compound.
“Hey, Sai! You’re here too!” Shisui called out.
Hinode’s head snapped straight up. There Sai was, standing just outside the gates of the compound. He looked at her knowingly, and she understood immediately that he just saved her butt.
The three of them made their way to Hinode and Shisui’s house, and when Shisui opened the door, the place was basically sparkling.
“Wow! Everything is exactly how I remember it!” Shisui exclaimed as he hurried inside.
Hinode looked at Sai with tears in her eyes. Through years of watching over children, mostly young boys, there was finally one who was actually tidy. She couldn’t help but reach her hands out to pinch the boy’s cheeks.
“Stop it,” Sai grumbles, “I’m not a little kid anymore.”
“Thank you, thank you, thank you!” Hinode whispered giddily to Sai. “By the way, how did you know…?”
“I could smell the carnal desire from both of you that morning,” Sai said with a straight face.
“Wha—Sai, I told you to stop reading those romance novels from Lady Kamome’s shelves!” Hinode fumed from embarrassment.
“What did you say you smell, Sai?” Shisui’s voice sounded from upstairs.
“Dinner! I’m making dinner!” Hinode shouted.
The next morning inside the Hokage’s office was not so much a lighthearted one. Hinode, Shisui, and Sai reported in. The siblings each gave up their intel on Orochimaru and the Akatsuki, while Sai waited by the door.
“So Orochimaru had been in contact with Akatsuki all this time,” Lady Tsunade murmured after she listened to both accounts of the siblings that stood before her. “And Akatsuki’s true leader is an old ancestor of the Uchiha clan?”
“That is what Itachi and I suspect,” said Shisui. “I was caught in battle with this Akatsuki member who possessed a Sharingan. Other than Itachi, Sasuke, Nee-san, and myself, all members of the Uchiha clan are deceased. However, there is one Uchiha who had left Konoha a long time ago that we did not account for.”
“Uchiha Madara,” Lady Tsunade finished the theory.
Every villager in Konoha, even the civilians, had at least heard of Uchiha Madara’s name. The other founder of the village whose face was not carved into the Hokage rock. The one whose name was tarnished in the history books. The one whom the Uchiha clan both revered and feared.
Hinode was slightly relieved. After discovering that the masked man’s Sharingan was Obito’s, Hinode had been imagining the worst. This meant that Uchiha Madara had stolen Obito’s eye.
But why Obito? He was just a kid when he died in the war. Shisui suspected that it was just an unlucky coincidence. Well, lucky for Madara. Most of the Uchiha clan was still working at the Police Force at that time, so not many left the village during the war. Obito happened to be in foreign grounds, and happened to awaken his Sharingan, and happened to be separated from his team. And Madara happened upon the body he’d been waiting for.
“The body he’d been waiting for?” Hinode asked.
“Madara’s original body must have been too withered by age,” Shisui said. “If he is plotting revenge against Konoha, then he needs a new body. And what better than a body of the same kin?”
“And Orochimaru had been developing his Soul Transfer Technique to achieve immortality,” Tsunade added. “They were using each other.”
Fists formed by Hinode’s sides. Madara did not steal Obito’s eye; he stole Obito’s entire body. She was fuming on the inside and wanted nothing more to destroy the man, ancestor or not.
“And if what Nee-san gathered from Kabuto is true, then we must capture Orochimaru during his rendezvous with Akatsuki,” said Shisui.
Tsunade folded her hands on top of the desk in front of her. She furrowed her brows. “I agree, but I would prefer to put Team Kakashi on that mission.”
Right on cue, someone knocked at Tsunade’s door. At the Hokage’s permission, Shizune entered the office, followed by Sakura. The younger kunoichi seemed to be injured, but not in an alarming state.
“Sakura, you’re back!” Tsunade was pleasantly surprised. “Then that means…”
“The retrieval of the Kazekage was successful,” Sakura managed a smile before turning towards the others in the room. “You’re here too, Hinode-sensei! And these are…”
“This is my brother, Shisui, and this is Sai, kind of a student of mine,” Hinode said to Sakura. A weight fell off of her chest at the realization that Kakashi and his team came back safely.
“And where is Kakashi?” Tsunade cut to the chase. “He should be giving me the report.”
“Well, um,” Sakura scratched her cheek. “Kakashi-sensei is at the hospital. Low chakra level. Again.”
A mental image of Kakashi lying powerlessly in bed surfaced in Hinode’s head. She’s seen it too many times. Before she knew it, she was already walking towards the door.
“Nee-san?” Shisui’s voice called from behind. “Where are you going? And what are you suddenly so happy about?”
Hinode’s whole body stiffened. Sai, in front of her now, shook his head exasperatedly.
“I thought it would be good to move this discussion to the hospital?” Hinode turned back with a nervous smile. “You want to send Kakashi on the next mission, right? We have to make sure he’s in good shape! Shisui here has dabbled in medical ninjutsu, so maybe he can help out!”
“Oh? A descendant of the Mibu clan who can perform medical ninjutsu?” Tsunade raised an eyebrow. “This should be interesting.”
Tsunade’s chair scraped against the floor as she got up to her feet. She pulled her green haori off the back of her chair and put it on, then walked past the group, exiting her office first. As she signaled everyone to follow her, Hinode let out a sigh of relief. The quick thinking surprised even herself.
“You’re acting kind of weird, Nee-san,” Shisui pointed out as their trio trailed in the back. “Could it be that you’re secretly dating Hatake Kakashi?”
Hinode nearly tripped over herself.
“Wha–I’m—Wait–But—!!” Hinode stammered in a hushed voice, face beet red.
“Don’t be embarrassed, Nee-san!” Shisui smiled brightly at Hinode. A little too brightly. “It’s okay! We may be shinobi, but we deserve to have normal love lives too!”
Hinode shuddered slightly at Shisui. What the hell is my little brother on about?
To be continued