A little ficlet...
I wanted to write something, so here I go...
Written spur of the moment. Unbetaed. Rating is G for Worksafe.
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Zack breathed out, slowly moving from one kata to another as he practiced his forms. It was a lazy day off for him, and the fact that Cloud and Aeris were off on missions, he didn't have anyone to bother for the duration of the day.
The stillness was driving him crazy!
He was just beginning another kata set, when the hairs on the back of his neck prickled, alerting him to the fact that he was being watched. Calmly, he continued through his forms, trying not to alert his watcher that they'd been noticed. Finally, determining that whoever was observing him was not hostile, he called out, "You can come out you know."
There wasn't even a rustle of the underbrush, but when Zack next blinked, a small form suddenly appeared. Zack immediately tensed the moment he recognized the red and white fan on the other's clothes. Holding back a frown, as the other was nothing but a kid, he asked, "Can I help you?"
The kid assessed him with, what Zack perceived as a rather direct stare, and after a long moment said, "You are Uchiha."
This time Zack allowed the frown to show, the emotionless voice of the kid causing his 'big brother' instincts to rear their head. He hadn't felt this way since he had first met Cloud.
"Who wants to know?" he asked, trying to figure out why this boy seemed so inhuman.
"I am Uchiha Itachi," the boy said formally, with a polite bow, and suddenly everything made sense. The boy was the Uchiha Itachi, the Clan's Prodigy and future Head.
"You're Fugaku's oldest brat." Zack clarified, watching with satisfaction as the boy tried to suppress a twitch at the 'endearment'. Kid apparently wasn't as emotionless as he had thought, but after Sephiroth, even the hardest case would have been easy to crack.
"Yes."
"Well, I'm Zack. Nice to meet ya!" Zack replied cheerfully, as he casually strode over to the brat and held out his hand to shake. The kid just stared at it blankly for a moment, before looking at Zack once more.
"You did not answer my question." he said, ignoring the hand.
'Question?' Zack thought, confused, before he remembered the first thing that the boy had said. "Oh! Yeah, I was an Uchiha. Aren't anymore, though."
The kid blinked, the only outward sign of his surprise. "Why?"
"The clan doesn't like me, so they kicked me out." Zack explained. When he noticed that the boy was going to ask another question, he broke in, "Listen. It doesn't matter 'why', alright? What is, is. And truthfully, it was better for all involved. Got it?"
The boy didn't respond, only staring at Zack as if he were some new sort of strange puzzle.
Zack had a feeling he was going to be seeing more of the kid.