Chapter 3: Not Part of the Plan
Fugaku Uchiha does not shout. You'll remember that later, when you try to explain to Old Masa why you came to work the next morning with your hands still shaking. He doesn't shout and he doesn't threaten. He stands in the main hall of the Naka Shrine with a lantern in one hand and his Sharingan blazing and simply looks at you, and the looking is worse than anything he could have said.
He's shorter than his son, broader, with heavy brows and a mouth that seems designed for disapproval. The police chief's vest, even at midnight. Behind him in the doorway stands a young man with untidy dark hair and a cheerful, apologetic expression, waving at you very slightly with two fingers, like you've met at a party.
"Shisui," says Itachi, flat.
"He asked where you were," Shisui says. "I'm a terrible liar. You know I'm a terrible liar."
"You are an excellent liar."
"Not to him." Shisui spreads his hands. "Sorry, Itachi. Hi. You must be the archivist. He talks about you constantly."
"Shisui."
"Well, not constantly. Weekly. Thrice weekly."
"Enough," says Fugaku.
The shrine goes silent. Fugaku's gaze moves from you to his son, and when he speaks again his voice has dropped to something quiet and terrible.
"You brought an outsider into the shrine. To the tablet." Every word is a stone set down. "You understand that our laws permit me to take her eyes for this. To take her memory, at the very least. You understand that if the council learns of it, it will be called espionage. That this could undo every year of the peace you claim to want."
Itachi doesn't step back. He doesn't step forward either. He simply stands, slightly in front of you, his weight even.
"I understand," he says. "Before you decide anything, Father, I'd ask you to look at the tablet. Not with the eyes."
"I have read that tablet a hundred times."
"With the eyes. Never without." Itachi's voice doesn't change. "She found something, Father. She found it in less than an hour. She's the only person in Konoha who could have."
Fugaku looks at you. You make yourself look back. It's like meeting the gaze of a hawk.
"It was recarved," you say. Your voice comes out steadier than you feel, which is something. "The line about the tree strangling the fire. It's laid over an older inscription. The tool marks are different, the depth, the angle. Someone cut a new message into the stone and threaded it with chakra so only the Sharingan would see it. The original says the opposite. The original says the two clans are of one blood."
"That's absurd."
"It isn't," you say. "It's just old. If you'll let me show you, sir, I can show you in five minutes. If I'm wrong, you can take my eyes and I'll hand you the spoon."
Shisui makes a noise that might be a laugh, quickly strangled. Itachi turns his head a fraction of an inch toward you. You don't look at him. If you look at him you'll lose your nerve.
The silence goes on so long you can hear the river under the floor.
Then Fugaku sets down his lantern.
"Five minutes," he says.
It takes twelve, because Fugaku makes you show him three times, and then makes you show him the angle of the raking light, and then kneels in front of the stone with his own lamp held exactly as you held yours, his Sharingan deactivated, his face very close to the surface. Nobody speaks. Shisui leans against the wall at the bottom of the stairs, arms folded, for once not smiling. Itachi stands with his hands at his sides and you can feel, without looking, every inch of distance between his shoulder and yours.
Finally Fugaku sits back on his heels. He stays there for a long time, looking at the stone that his family has built its fear on for three generations.
"Who did this," he says. Not to anyone in particular.
"I don't know," you say. "Not yet. But I can find out. The chisel marks have a signature, if you know how to read them. People who carve in a hurry make the same mistakes. If someone in Konoha has done work like this before, there'll be a record of it somewhere." You hesitate. "That's my job too. Finding records."
Fugaku turns his head and studies you. Not as an intruder now. As something else, something he hasn't decided on yet.
"You understand," he says, "that you will not speak of this to anyone. Not your Hokage. Not your archive. Not your family."
"Yes, sir."
"And you understand," he goes on, and now he looks at Itachi, and something weary and old moves across his face, "that the elders will not accept what you've found. Not easily. They'll say you're Senju-sympathizers. They'll say she's a plant. They'll say my son has been bewitched by some librarian from the basement." A pause. "They may not be entirely wrong about that last part."
"Archivist," you say, before you can stop yourself.
Fugaku blinks.
"I'm an archivist, sir. Librarians lend things. I preserve them. It's a common confusion."
Shisui puts his hand over his face. Itachi makes a very small sound that, in anyone else, you would have called a cough.
Fugaku Uchiha looks at you for a long moment. Then, unbelievably, the corner of his mouth moves. Just slightly. Just once.
"Itachi," he says, rising. "Walk the archivist home. Shisui, you're with me. We'll speak in the morning. All of us." He picks up the lantern and heads for the stairs, and then stops with one foot on the bottom step, not turning around. "And Itachi. The elders' plan for you. The marriage alliance. We'll speak of that in the morning too."
He goes. Shisui follows him up, and pauses at the top just long enough to give Itachi two thumbs up and mouth something you're fairly sure is idiot. Then the trapdoor closes, and you're alone in the stone room with Itachi Uchiha and an ember of lantern-light and three hundred years of lies.
He walks you home the long way, along the river. It's past two in the morning. The village is asleep, the streets silver with moonlight, and somewhere far off a dog is barking at nothing.
You don't talk for a while. You can't. Your legs feel like someone else's, and every so often your hands start trembling again and you push them into your sleeves.
"You told my father to his face that he could take your eyes," Itachi says eventually.
"I panicked."
"You offered him a spoon."
"I panicked specifically."
He stops walking. You're on the little bridge over the river where the lantern festival happens every summer. The water moves under you, black and silver.
"The marriage alliance," you say, because you have to. "What was that?"
He's quiet. Then he says, very evenly, "The elders have a plan. They've had it since I was born. I become ANBU captain. I take my father's place at the council table. I marry within the clan, a woman of a good branch line, to strengthen the bloodline and the vote. And in time I become clan head, and I steer the Uchiha toward whatever the elders have decided is the future." He looks down at the water. "Every part of it was arranged before I could walk. I agreed to all of it. It was the price of peace."
"And then you came down the stairs."
"And then I came down the stairs." He turns to face you. The moonlight is hard and white on his face, and his eyes are dark grey, no red at all. Just his eyes. "You're not part of the plan."
"I know."
"You were never part of any plan. I didn't plan you. I came down to the third sub-basement looking for a treaty, and you were bent over a scroll muttering at it, and you looked up and said 'Can I help you or are you just going to loom,' and I..." He stops. He looks, for one heartbeat, almost helpless. "I have planned every day of my life since I was four years old. You are the only thing that has ever happened to me that I did not see coming."
You can't breathe. You've stopped trying.
"I don't want the elders' plan," Itachi says. "Not anymore. I want to find who recarved that stone. I want my clan and this village to stop sharpening knives at each other. And I want to come down your stairs every week and hold the ladder and have you tell me I'll be banned if I sneeze. That's all. That's the whole of what I want. I've never said it aloud before."
"Itachi."
"I'm sorry. I know it's a great deal of trouble. I know I'm..."
You reach up, grab the front of his cloak, and kiss him.
He goes very still. For one awful second you think you've got it catastrophically wrong. Then he breathes out against your mouth, a long, shaking breath like something he's been holding for eleven weeks, and his hand comes up to cradle the back of your head, and he kisses you back.
It's slow. Careful. The way he does everything. As if he's memorizing it, the shape of your mouth, the angle, the cold tip of your nose against his cheek. His other hand finds your waist and holds you there on the bridge like you might blow away. You can feel his heart going under your fist, much faster than his face would ever let on.
When you finally pull apart, he doesn't let go. He rests his forehead against yours and closes his eyes.
"You added a fifth rule," he says. "On the board. I saw it, when I came by at closing yesterday."
You go hot from your collar to your hairline. "You weren't supposed to see that."
"Do not fall for the patrons." He opens his eyes. They're soft in a way you didn't know they could be. "I think we've both broken it."
"I'm going to have to take it down."
"Leave it up," Itachi says. "I'd like to keep breaking it."
You get to work at nine the next morning on two hours of sleep, dizzy and stupidly happy, with your lips still feeling slightly bruised and a carefully casual expression that fools nobody.
Old Masa is waiting at the top of the stairs. He isn't holding tea. He's holding a sealed scroll, and his hands are trembling worse than yours did last night.
"A man came," he says. "Before opening. He had a requisition order. He wanted everything you've ever translated. All your notes. All your rubbings. He wanted to know if you'd been to the Uchiha district last night." Masa swallows. "I told him you were out sick. He left this for you."
You break the seal. Inside there's a single line in a precise, cold hand, and a stamp at the bottom you recognize from the oldest and most dangerous files in the building. A stamp that has no official name, and belongs to a man who officially has no department.
The archivist will report to Root headquarters at noon to discuss her recent research. Come alone. Do not inform the Uchiha. Danzo.