The first rays of morning were already beginning to reach Konoha when Takehito Uchiha left the patriarch's residence.
He did not walk.
He moved quickly through the compound, barely acknowledging the clansmen who greeted him along the way.
An attendant had arrived only minutes earlier.
Fugaku was awake.
That was all Takehito needed to hear.
At forty-seven, Takehito still looked every bit like the man expected to lead the Uchiha.
Tall.
Broad-shouldered.
Dark hair beginning to show streaks of gray around the temples.
A hard face made sharper by three nights of poor sleep.
His eyes in particular looked tired.
Only Takehito himself knew how little he had actually slept since Fugaku was brought back unconscious.
It had been the worst three days he could remember since his wife died sixteen years ago.
Strangely, he had thought about her often during them.
More than he had in years.
Perhaps because the circumstances were too similar in the one way that mattered.
Again, he had been standing beside a bed while someone important to him lay there and there was very little he could actually do.
His wife had died after giving birth to Fugaku.
Now Fugaku himself had spent three days unconscious for reasons nobody could properly explain.
Takehito hated helplessness.
He understood enemies.
He understood politics.
He understood injuries.
Helpless waiting was worse.
Especially because none of this had made sense from the beginning.
Fugaku had been doing well.
Very well, actually.
Takehito rarely told him that directly.
There was little value in filling the boy's head with praise when half the clan was already prepared to flatter the patriarch's heir.
But the reports from Fugaku's officers had been consistently positive.
He assigned cases efficiently.
Listened.
Did not abuse his rank.
Did not hide behind it either.
And since receiving his captaincy, he had seemed more motivated than before.
So Takehito had decided to give him something more substantial.
A missing chūnin.
Sensitive enough to matter.
Complicated enough to require judgment.
Exactly the sort of case that could justify Fugaku personally leaving his desk and leading his unit in the field.
It had seemed like the natural next step.
Fugaku was sixteen.
Hardly a child by shinobi standards.
In this world, a sixteen-year-old could already have years of missions, bloodshed, command experience, even a family of his own.
Takehito had no intention of sheltering his son forever.
Still, he had not expected the trail to end at a Root position.
He had considered the possibility that Danzō might eventually take an interest in Fugaku.
Of course he had.
Fugaku was the future patriarch.
Root watched everyone worth watching.
But not this quickly.
And certainly not in a way that ended with his only son unconscious for three days.
Fortunately, the physical examination had revealed very little damage.
Every Uchiha medic who inspected Fugaku reached roughly the same conclusion.
The blow to the face was minor.
The impact to the back of the head looked worse than it was.
No dangerous swelling.
No internal bleeding.
No major damage to the brain that they could identify.
Physically, Fugaku should have awakened much sooner.
That was when the questions became more unpleasant.
Several senior medics suspected the problem was spiritual rather than physical.
Takehito had called in older clansmen with more experience in chakra disorders, genjutsu trauma, and Sharingan related irregularities.
Their methods were crude.
There was no medical technique capable of simply opening a person's soul and showing what was wrong.
They checked what they could.
Chakra pathways by touch.
Pulse.
Vibe.
Breathing.
Natural circulation.
The Sharingan itself had always allowed them to observe some external patterns in Fugaku's chakra flow, though even that revealed far less than Takehito would have liked.
Something had clearly been unsettled.
That much everyone agreed on.
Yet over the following days, Fugaku's circulation also gradually calmed.
His chakra stopped fluctuating erratically.
The rhythm became steadier.
Denser, perhaps.
More vigorous.
A few medical seniors even suggested that Fugaku's pathways seemed stronger than before.
Nobody understood why.
So eventually, Takehito made the only sensible decision available.
Leave him alone.
Monitor him.
Wait.
He hated every second of it.
His anger had not helped.
Takehito had gone personally to the Hokage Tower.
He had not been that furious in years.
Hiruzen received him privately.
Danzō's explanation had already reached the Hokage by then.
A jurisdiction dispute.
Two organizations operating without full knowledge of the other's assignment.
Fugaku advancing.
A Root operative interpreting that movement as hostile.
A fast defensive strike.
An unfortunate escalation.
Hiruzen had insisted repeatedly that there had been no assassination attempt.
No planned effort to cripple the Uchiha heir.
No secret order to eliminate him.
According to him, something minor and mundane had simply collided with something nobody anticipated.
A freak accident.
Perhaps Fugaku possessed some previously unknown spiritual vulnerability.
Perhaps the stress of the confrontation interacted badly with something already present.
Hiruzen admitted they did not know.
But he had assured Takehito personally that Root had not been sent there to murder his son.
Takehito had not fully believed him.
He still did not.
But he also could not make the available facts fit a deliberate assassination attempt.
If Danzō wanted Fugaku dead, why allow four witnesses to leave?
Why strike him with a fist?
Why stop immediately afterward?
Why identify Root at all once Fugaku collapsed?
Why allow the Police officers to carry him away without further interference?
If the goal was permanent injury, the method was equally strange.
One basic taijutsu strike.
No blade.
No poison.
No follow-up.
And now Fugaku appeared to be recovering completely.
Perhaps even improving for some reason.
None of it fit.
Unfortunately, the alternative explanation was hardly satisfying either.
Why had Fugaku failed so badly against such a simple attack?
His actual combat ability was already around jōnin level.
And according to all four officers, something changed immediately before impact.
Fugaku's expression went blank.
Then confused.
His posture loosened.
For a fraction of a second, he looked almost as though he had forgotten where he was.
Then the punch landed.
Takehito had questioned every officer separately.
Their descriptions matched.
None had sensed conventional genjutsu.
None had noticed an additional enemy.
And Fugaku himself, the strongest among them, had apparently noticed nothing before the confrontation erupted.
Takehito knew genjutsu like the back of his hand.
Every serious Uchiha did.
A technique capable of reaching from a significant distance, bypassing five trained shinobi, instantly disorienting a talented two tomoe Uchiha, and leaving no obvious trace afterward...
Takehito had never encountered one.
That did not mean it could not exist.
It meant he had no explanation.
Which only made the conversation ahead more important.
If Fugaku remembered what happened inside his own head, perhaps they could finally begin making sense of it.
Takehito turned onto the path leading toward the clan medical building.
The tension in his chest had already eased slightly.
His son was awake.
That mattered more than everything else.
But the weight had not disappeared completely.
Not yet.
Takehito needed to see him himself.
...
A hurried man entered Fugaku's room.
He had never been properly explored in the so-called "plot" in his past life.
Barely more than an absence where a person should have been.
But Fugaku knew him as his father.
Immediately.
Emotionally.
Genuinely.
There was no strange disconnect between knowing Takehito from sixteen years of life and remembering that the story from Earth had barely acknowledged his existence.
The man standing in front of him was not background information.
He was the person who had raised him.
Fugaku remembered sitting across from him at breakfast.
Being corrected by him during training.
Being scolded.
Being trusted.
Spending years trying to earn praise Takehito deliberately gave sparingly.
Seeing him now made those memories matter far more than anything the old story had failed to show.
Takehito stopped just inside the doorway.
For perhaps a second, neither spoke.
Then some of the stiffness left the older man's shoulders.
"You're awake."
Fugaku almost smiled.
For Takehito, that was practically an emotional outburst.
"Apparently."
His father's eyes immediately sharpened again.
"How do you feel?"
There it was.
Concern translated into interrogation.
Much more familiar.
Fugaku shifted his head slightly against the pillow.
"Like I've been unconscious for three days."
"You have."
"...Then surprisingly good."
Takehito studied him closely, clearly deciding whether that answer reassured him or merely created another question.
Fugaku knew there would be many of those.
And now that his father was actually standing here, he was glad he had spent the night deciding which ones he intended to answer.