The Harsh Truth

Chapter 1

It was July the twenty-three. The sky was clear, the sun was high, the clouds were white and dwindling around lazily, without a worry in the world, letting the wind carry them over the Hokage's monument, that sported three faces, the one of the first Hokage, the one of the second Hokage, the one of the Jiji, as an overactive blond called him, and the one of the current Hokage.

On that day, a blond-spiked boy stood next to a raven haired one, and, with a small, but adorable pout, made his best puppy-eyes.

The other boy stared with a slightly nervous tick mark on the forehead, before sighing, and splitting in half the popsicle he had, those types of popsicles that had two wooden sticks, and that usually were meant to be shared. The first boy, the blond one, smiled with a happy grin, grabbing it and starting to suck on it, while waiting, together with his friend, for one of their parents to come and get the two.

"The next year, we're going to be six, and at the academy," Naruto pointed out, as the Uchiha rolled his black eyes, with a sigh, "and maybe you'll find yourself a fan club, so you'll stop being this downbeat," he added, as Itachi shook his head.

"Otou-san told me that Uncle Moto committed suicide last night, he was drowning in despair," a sorrowful look appeared on the face of the five years old, he *was* born on the nine of June, a fact that made him the elder among the two, something that Naruto had more than once used for his own teasing, but that actually seemed to mark a great deal the differences between the two boys.

Firstly, one was dressed in bright orange clothes, with a pair of goggles strapped around his neck. He had orange trousers and, had he actually been a ninja, without a doubt he'd have been the first casualty in the recently ended Third Shinobi war. His clear blue eyes and blond spiked hair clearly resembled those of his father, and his cheeks sported three whisker-like marks that, coupled with his father being the fourth Hokage, had meant he had his very own fan-club, since the age of one.

He was pretty sure his mother was to blame, to claim Kushina Uzumaki was a fawning mother would be to claim the arctic wind was mildly breezy…and by fawning, it actually meant that Naruto had more strange, animal-like pajamas than any other normal boy would actually have, and there were pictures that, he could swear on Kami, had been taken with a brief distance of a second one from another, in such a way that he could actually flip them all and have a film ready, displaying things like his first day in the pool, his first walk, his first word, why take a picture for his first word? He actually had no idea about that, but he didn't want to point that out, for fear of having his own cheeks pinched repeatedly, with claims of how cute he was when pouting.

The other boy, on the other hand, Itachi Uchiha, had a serious look, a calm and collected attitude, and seemed mostly at ease *not* acting like a child. Having the Uchiha deployed on mass for the war, and having many died in the protection of Konohagakure, it was to be expected that he'd grow up mentally, seeing clansmen, cousins, or family friends die made that effect on one's mind, especially when some died after the war, the grief, the guilt, the atrocity of the war still seemingly fresh in their mind. It hadn't been a pretty war. Destructions, villages having to be completely razed, children and women killed without a minimum of piety. He hadn't obviously seen it, but he had felt the change in some of the survivors, it was subtle, at first, just a saddened glance now and then to some children, or maybe an awry smile to a pregnant woman, or things like that. Either they turned back to near normality, with the help of others or through the use of the drink of forgetting, Sake that was, or they didn't, and usually they either degenerated, or they more than likely fell prey to their darkness, and committed suicide. Sometime they brought their sons and daughters with them, other times they simply left the village and were found in the forest, their eyes crushed by their own Kunais, maybe in an attempt to erase the memories or the things they had seen.