Uchiha Fugaku was a complicated man to understand.
Some who knew him thought him a simple and straightforward man, but he was anything but. In fact, he was quite often counterintuitive to those who would try to analyze him. Was he a hypocrite, saying one thing and doing another? Or was he a man planning for the long term, concentrated more on the goal than on the means? At times, the line blurred, and some said that he was simply yet another one of the power hungry idiots that plagued the clans's leadership.
Some thought that he treated his secondborn with coldness because his secondborn had not displayed the innate genius of his firstborn.
Little Itachi had been a veritable genius, developing at an astounding rate and graduated as a shinobi at the tender age of six, while his little sister, Satsuki, was far from achieving his rate of development, though it was too soon to tell how talented she'd be at the art of shinobi, few had their hopes up.
Others thought that he treated his secondborn with coldness simply because she had been born a female.
At this, his wife, Uchiha Mikoto scoffed.
It wasn't that Fugaku disdained his secondborn, she mused. The man was simply completely inept when it came to displaying kindness or affection. She knew, their marriage was based on the fact that she was one of the very few women in the clan who could see that he was genuinely lost when it came to displaying affection, which made him look like an uncaring, cold prick.
To someone like her, who knew him inside and out, it was easy to tell he kept from his daughter simply because displays of affection were completely alien to him.
It was the Uchiha Clan, and he exemplified it, after all. Some said that when it came to displaying any emotion other than anger, they were even worse than the Hyuga, and Mikoto would have to agree…
***
Uchiha Satsuki was a girl of six years. She was short, wore her hair on pigtails and also happened to be very studious. She had a brother. He liked to tug on her pigtails, which she protested a lot every time he did it. Secretly, she liked it when he pulled on them, since it was one of the few times she got to interact with her family in any normal fashion. She had her father, a man so distant he might as well not be there, and her mother, a woman who worked as the Hokage's daughter's maid or something like that for most of the day, and usually spent her time at home with her husband.
All in all, her family was standard fare for a home with two shinobi parents, aggravated by the fact that both shinobi were high level, one the head of the military police and Uchiha Clan and the other a high ranking ANBU that was one of the most trusted by the Hokage.
Still, she was proud of her family, and she was proud to be a member of it. Even if these days, she keeps seeing her brother less and less, since he had moved out four years ago, when he'd become a shinobi, and could only come visit her every few days.
Satsuki studied a lot. She trained every day, with the exercises her family had laid out for her, and studied the books and scrolls that they told her to read every day. Sometimes multiple times per day. It had taken her a while to learn how to read, but soon she had taken to doing so both for study and for pleasure. There wasn't much more to do in her parents's estate, and the other children who lived in the compound rarely, if ever, wished to play with her, so she often found herself alone for long periods of time.
But it was okay. Because she had her family. Mostly.
She missed her brother.
***
Satsuki would've wished to be anywhere but the Hokage's mansion. She knew that she wouldn't like it. Call it her feminine intuition, but she knew that she would wind up very, very angry.
"Mikoto-obachan, who's she?" asked a blond girl, blinking at Satsuki as she trailed after her mother, visiting the Hokage's mansion for the very first time. It was a large, lavish place, clearly created more for show than functionality. Given that Satsuki knew the Hokage entertained and lodged foreigners, dignitaries, diplomats and all forms of noblesse, it was not as shocking as one might think for the Hokage's home to be such a place.
It only made sense, the nobles were more relaxed and in better moods in environments closer to their homes, after all.
"Say hello, Satsuki-chan, this is the Hokage's daughter, Naruko," Mikoto said, stepping aside so Naruko and Satsuki could look at each other directly, instead of through the space between Mikoto's legs.
"Hello," Satsuki said, bowing slightly. She'd introduce herself properly, but her mother had already introduced her. It was odd, because she'd been taught how to do formal introductions, usually for the eventuality she might meet someone like the person she was meeting right now. Which threw her for a loop when her mother ignored that altogether. "I'm Satsuki, daughter of Uchiha Fugaku and Uchi—"
"Hi!" Naruko called, waving and interrupting her entirely. "Of course, you know who I am already, don't you?" she said, raising an eyebrow, almost as if expecting her to nod.
Satsuki did, though she was ticked off by the disrespect towards her that was interrupting her introduction.
"Well, girls, your fathers have both agreed that it's better if I train you both at the same time. Now, Satsuki, Naruko-chan here hasn't actually been doing all the exercises your father set out for you, nor has she studied as hard as you have, so take it easy on her, okay?"
Satsuki nodded. "I suppose she's a novice, the—"
Naruko scoffed and stamped her foot on the ground. "Me? A Novice? I'm the Yellow Flash's daughter! I'll show you!"
At this, Satsuki felt her eyebrow twitch. This girl was… incredibly annoying.