Summary: A reflection on Kages by one Uchiha Sasuke.
Disclaimer: Oh, hell, no. Do I look like a mangaka to you? I can't draw worth beans, I'm certainly not going to claim to own Naruto.
Sasuke had loved Konoha's Sandaime the way every Konoha-nin had. The old man had been a rock in his young life, unchanging and ever-present as the face carved into the mountain over the village. He had touched all of the villagers' lives in one way or another, and as such they had all felt his loss.
At the time, Sasuke had hated Orochimaru for killing the man. Once in Oto, when he realized that to get out of the trap he'd willingly walked into he'd have to kill his new sensei, he'd been darkly satisfied. He was, after all, an avenger by choice and necessity.
Of course, if Oto taught Sasuke anything, it was that nothing was quite that black and white. Watching was what he was best at, and he watched as Orochimaru drew his ninja to him like moths to flames. He watched as the Otokage promised each and every one of his villagers something for their loyalty, and then fulfilled his side of the bargain. He watched as even the ones who had not come willingly, who hated Orochimaru and vowed –silently, irrevocably– to kill him, slowly grew to be willing to die for him, for Oto.
Sasuke wondered, as he watched, if things would have turned out differently if Konoha had functioned on a system of reciprocity, like Oto did. He wondered as he, one of the willing citizens of this corrupt little village, trained for the power he would not have needed if Konoha had done its duty by him and its citizens and gone after Itachi when he first left the village, if life would have been better or worse if the role of avenger had been taken out of his hands while he was still young and shattered enough to allow it.
And he hated the Sandaime Hokage, just a little.