Night fell.
The Uchiha compound blazed with lights.
As clan head, Uchiha Fugaku felt worn out after finishing the day's affairs.
Dealing with the friction between clan and village pressed on him more with each passing day.
Even so.
Coming home to see his three children and his wife gathered at the table, waiting, always brought a hint of warmth.
Well, his second son had not waited as usual. Looked like he had already eaten and was picking his teeth.
A family eating together carried its own kind of feeling.
Yet at some point, the clan head's table had grown silent.
Itachi was like that.
Fugaku was like that too.
They were father and son, but as Itachi grew, he seemed less able to understand the clan. His resistance to the clan ended up landing on his father's shoulders.
It was not unfilial piety.
It was that different way he thought. More often than not, he saw his father as the Uchiha clan head, not a father in the literal sense.
The quiet table steeped in a hard-to-read mood.
Amane pushed his glasses up and glanced at the silent Itachi who ate without a word.
By the timeline of the story, he should already be a double agent for Uchiha and Konoha and have joined the ANBU.
It was hard to imagine what weight pressed on a boy barely in his teens.
Amane shook his head. He did not bother to dwell on it.
What was meant to happen would happen. All he could do was rely on his own strength to rewrite the Uchiha's ending.
At least.
The man and woman before him had given him true family. Guarding that family was what he ought to do.
Dinner ended.
To Fugaku's mild surprise, his second son did not leave the table the moment he finished. He stayed seated, waiting for something.
Knowing his child, Fugaku understood. He wanted a private talk.
"Come. To the study."
...
In the study.
Fugaku looked his second son over and finally fixed on the frames of his glasses, then let out a sigh.
He had never heard of anyone in the Uchiha being born nearsighted.
If it happened at all, it should have been after awakening the Mangekyo, a side effect of losing ocular power.
There was no doubt, though. This one was his own flesh and blood.
He could not make sense of it.
There was only one way to explain it.
His son had awakened the Mangekyo in the womb and spent a great deal of pupil power, leaving him severely nearsighted at birth.
But that guess had no ground to stand on.
He would sooner believe the Uchiha had produced a nearsighted child than believe a newborn could awaken the Mangekyo. In Mikoto's belly, the only thing Amane could have seen was Sasuke.
"Easy, Father."
Amane nudged his glasses and plopped down on the floor, nothing like Itachi's formal kneeling when he saw his father.
If you had to describe it.
This was what a real father-son relationship looked like.
"You are not old enough to smoke."
Fugaku took a sip of tea and frowned.
"Did Sasuke tell you?"
A mild, gentle face suddenly blossomed into a smile. Amane flipped to his feet and rolled up his sleeves.
From the look of him, he was about to storm out and educate his little brother on the meaning of respect for one's elder.
Brotherly harmony and all that.
"Sit."
Fugaku waved, headache rising. "Your father has a nose. I can smell it."
A nose?
So sharp a sense of smell?
Amane sat back down, skeptical.
"It's late. Say what you came to say."
"I have much to handle tomorrow."
Fugaku did not explain more. He did not scold his five-year-old for smoking either.
It was not the same.
If this had been Itachi or Sasuke, he would have lectured them well.
But this second son was different. Ordinary methods did not work on him. He could politely spin a string of reasons that left you speechless.
To call it education was a stretch. This child was already beyond what he could teach.
With Amane, Fugaku preferred to be a kindly father and make friends with him.
It was a curious thing, a different feeling from the stern father he was with Sasuke and Itachi.
Besides.
The child was only five.
Yet he could often stand at a vantage farther than Fugaku's or even Itachi's, think through a problem, and offer insights that helped govern the clan.
In a sense, the son before him was a true prodigy.
Fugaku was happy to talk with Amane when he had time.
Amane.
He had named him for innocence.
That was his hope for the boy.
But the child had eaten the innocence whole and left the rest. He looked mild and scholarly, like a refined young gentleman.
The mischief inside him was impossible to read.
For example, no ordinary child would point at the character for dung during lessons and tell Sasuke it meant candy, then send him to ask Father for some, saying he wanted to eat it.
All things considered, Sasuke had grown well.
Who knew what ditch his second brother might lead him into later.
Time to talk business.
Amane went quiet.
He pulled a cigarette from his breast, lit it, and sank into thought.
His smoking was exposed, yet Fugaku had said nothing. It was not tonight's topic anyway.
He knew his own body. Smoke meant little to someone who could command red flame. Holding it between his fingers simply stirred memories of his previous life.
"Where are things now with the Uchiha and with Konoha?"
Amane adjusted his frames and spoke.
The first words drew a wry smile from Fugaku.
Barely five, yet sometimes he acted as if he understood everything and held it all in the palm of his hand. It was hard to pin him down.
Beside him, Sasuke was a real child.
Also five, yet Amane had sensed a strange air inside the Uchiha.
Faced with his son's question, Fugaku did not know how to answer.
Should he tell him the Uchiha were beset within and without?
That the hardliners and the comfort-seekers quarreled nonstop inside, while the Konoha leadership kept up the pressure outside?
What would saying it achieve?
These were problems not even he and Itachi and the whole clan could solve. What insight could a five-year-old give his father?
That was not the same as calling the child a genius.
Uchiha and Konoha was a mess left by history.
From Uchiha Madara and Senju Hashirama to the present, it had never gone away.
It seemed.
Only one of Konoha or Uchiha could remain.
"Itachi will stand with Konoha in the end."
"I want to ask you, Father..."
"If one day he rushes into this room with a blade in hand, what will you choose?"
From Fugaku's silence, Amane could tell they had reached that stage.
It was time to set the plan for Uchiha Fugaku in motion.
He needed his father, the Uchiha clan head, to give him full support.
...