The boy reaches for the food with his chopsticks, but after glancing at his mother, he takes the time to speak first.

She joins in the gesture, by mannerly rote, and...

Doesn't quite know what to do but let this dinner happen.  She will not be shattering the mood if she can help it.

The talk mostly stays superficial as Sasuke tears his way through his meal as quickly as he politely can, but once he finishes all bets are off.

"Are you going to be going to the Academy this year?"

"I do plan to.  There's too much I need to learn, to hope I'll be able to find it some other way.  The good chakra books probably aren't even available to Academy students, but - I don't really have much else to work with, given everything.

"I'm hoping to learn fuinjutsu, and maybe ninshu.  Though that doesn't seem like something the Academy would teach, really."

"Well, if you want to learn things that aren't at the academy, you should graduate early. Like my brother, he finished everything in just 2 years!"

"Sasuke, what did we say about bragging?"

"Not to. But mom, I wasn't talking about me!"

She blinks.  "...That sounds like a lot of homework."

"Exactly, you've got to be a genius to finish early."

"...Maybe?  I don't know what the coursework is like there but if it's really mostly written work I'd be very surprised.  And when it comes to learning how to move and stuff, the Sharingan is a huge advantage, ne?  ...I don't know if I'd be in so much of a hurry, though.  I don't like violence."

That's a baffling thing to say; Sasuke's face scrunches up in confusion, and they instead focus on the other parts of what Naruto said.

"Well, you've gotta be good with shuriken and kunai and taijutsu and ninjutsu, but I've been practicing most of those forever."

"Mhm, and that's the other part of why it was easier for your brother to graduate so fast.  You've already been doing things the Academy has to teach."

"You haven't? You should come practice shuriken with me, you don't have much time left."

He looks genuinely worried about the prospect.

...Oh no, he's being so earnest and kind.

"...If my guardians are alright with that, I'd love to."  More for the joy of having a friend, rather than because of any interest in shuriken qua shuriken, but...

Sage's breath.  She's done for.

"I do practice what I can; sneaking, mostly.  But the things in the Academy curriculum are there because the students are expected to have to learn them.  It's like...

"A shopkeep's kid is gonna know lots of math in math class, right?  And you're part of a big ninja clan that does ninja things.  But the math class isn't built for the shopkeep's kid who's already had lots of chances to learn math things - it's made for the...well, orphans who've never had a chance to learn things at their mother's knee.  For people who don't know anything about anything, so that they can know things about stuff."

"Then we need to go ask them."

"I'm sure nobody at the orphanage will have a problem with you practicing for the academy, but there's nothing wrong with being responsible and asking first."

She nods to Mikoto's statement.  "I'm sure they won't, really, it's just the principle of the thing.  I don't want to go missing."  ...Oh dear.  She actually said that?  The food must be getting to her.

That's a very concerning thing to say!

"Sasuke, why don't you go practice throwing shuriken yourself for a bit while I talk to Naruto?"

Why doesn't he ever get to listen to the interesting conversations?

"Hmmph."

Sasuke tromps outside, grabbing his practice shuriken pouch hanging by the door.

"...He's a good kid."  And she feels like she's never really had a chance to be a kid at all.  "And I'm - desperately honored by the way you trusted me to be around him, Uchiha-dono.  There aren't a lot who would, even with Jiraiya's seal of approval on, well.  The chakra beast in the room.  ...Which is kind of a funny saying when you know they're, like, people."  She waves at where the seal would be, if it were presently visible.

"...I'm guessing that there's some things you want to know about that, with some of what you might have been told recently.  And, uh, what I just said, which - I should say, that was about two thirds a joke, a third of not wanting to accidentally cause the Hokage to drop everything for a different manhunt than the one he's currently on, and a third, well, I can't say I'm not worried that if someone did start trouble or try to make me do... All of that stuff that people usually want to throw around huge gobs of chakra for... that I wouldn't be able to handle all of the...  Various angles of defending myself from that sort of pressure, without bad consequences for myself or for others.  Even if I think the Kyuubi and I would be in agreement on not doing that, it's...  I don't want to put that to the test, and if it does come to that, I don't want to go quietly, or - or be helpless.  Especially if whoever went for the Kyuubi that one time, comes back for another go.  ...So I guess it's a good thing Sasuke-kun wants to help me practice..."  She seems like she's only realizing that bit now, with a faintly shocked overtone to it.  "...That's four thirds, but still.  ...Don't really think it's a...  Real, live thing.  Just...I'm uncomfortably aware of how kidnappable I could be if I was careless - there are a couple kids who actually do seem to vanish every year, I think - and how many powerful people probably want to have control of me, you know?  The humor is what the Yamanakas call a coping mechanism.

"...I'm surprised I actually said it, really.  But...This has been -

"I can only hope that if my mother had survived that she would have been as good and kind as you, to have opened the softest places of your home to this young girl you don't really know."

...Oh.  Now she's crying.  ...This may as well happen.

There's a lot of things she wants to say to that, but the first thing she does is hug Naruto. Most of the things she wishes she could say she is emphatically forbidden from, but this at least is not even arguably treason. She lets Naruto cry it out for several moments before she speaks another word.

"That's a lot for one person to take on their own shoulders."

"...It is," she says, with a sort of determined finality to it, as she finally stops being bonelessly collapsed in Mikoto's embrace.  "But I couldn't willingly put this burden on anyone else, knowing how heavy it is.  Knowing that most people would treat the Kyuubi-no-Kitsune like a mad beast, or a god, or worse, a tool of the slaughter that he tells me he despises.  Which, in a textbook-worthy example of irony, is why he hates ninja so much.  ...I think he learned from the Sage.  Or at least, he attributed the idea of Samadhi and transcending the want for violence to the Sage, and the Theravāda monks who still carry that word around also attribute their teachings to the Sage as their great teacher.  While some of the sects who apparently took on the same practice are busy worshipping the Sage as a kami, which - I can't really put into words why that's a reason they wouldn't have known him but the other monks would have because of that contrast in how they elevated him but I'm dead sure it is - ...I'm sorry, I keep thinking about that bit of knowledge ever since I found it when I was only expecting to see some mention of Samadhi and whatnot coming from the Sage, and I don't even know if I'm going to need to argue the point to Hokage-sama at this point, but I can't seem to stop trying to plan it out in advance...."  She takes a moment to catch her breath.

"...I'm not sure I was supposed to tell you any of that, really, but I'm pretty sure it's only the precise way I learned all this knowledge that is the secret secret here.  Despite everyone already knowing it, and knowing everyone knows it, and so on.  ...How on earth that works I really don't know, but it does seem to and at this point I don't even want to ask.  It seems...absurd.  And it probably has, like, three other reasons for existing that are also secrets because I'm just...  Tangled up in intrigue like a fly in a spider's web, I'm pretty darn sure.  ...We still don't know who it was that attacked the village to begin with, or why they thought they needed to use a genjutsu about it, as far as I know.  Though it's not like anybody's telling me anything about this.  Even though I'm involved."

That's a lot to take in at once, and she's not sure she believes most of it - no, that's the wrong approach. Naruto clearly believes it, and while someone feeding them lies or misleading truths is objectively pretty concerning the immediate priority is what they're going to do - and what they think they need to do - about it.

"That's the problem with talking to adults; we have so much experience being right that it's harder to stop and notice when we're not. I'm not really any different, most of the time, but at least I can try. That was why you first came to the Uchiha compound, right? Because you learned something?"

She nods, and kind of leans into the hug that she hadn't exactly left but had loosened up on a bit.  "Yeah.  I did.  The Kyuubi said - oh, what were the exact words - I was trying to convince him that he'd get more things that he wanted if he helped me sic Konoha on the person that he says put a Sharingan genjutsu on him during the rampage, and he said that their eyes had 'the power of the kaleidoscope' - as if I was supposed to know what that meant - which, when I tried to get actual details out of him, he said it was a form of the Sharingan that could burn lifeforce for power, and something about getting a Sharingan to do that being linked to kinslaying.  ...Which doesn't sound right, but I don't know enough about Sharingan to dispute it.  ...He also thinks they're cursed, which, on the long shot that you have any idea who this is, was something to do with 'Indra's folly'?  I couldn't find any mention of that name in the history books, though..."

"...And, uh, relevantly, in a 'most people aren't this good at lying' way, the Sharingan being involved in that incident came up when he accused Konoha of having an eugenics program, a little while before I thought of trying to play the Kyūbi's 'I hate ninja so much that I use ninshu to project my utter disdain for them over a five mile radius' thing - I have someone who can corroborate that one directly, actually, though they're busy - to convince him that no matter who won in a fight between Konoha and Mysterious Sharingan-Haver, there would probably be less ninja - which...

"Is all I believe I can really say about that, because I'm certainly not saying the specifics - but you can draw your own conclusions about it, probably.  ...I'm not sure it was Orochimaru, though.  Which also isn't something I can't tell you, I think."