This story is mine, all original characters are mine, buy any character or place you recognise belongs to Masashi Kishimoto…

Forever Changed

Prologue

The battlefield was silent, empty. All who lay before him were dead, but not by his own hand. Too late had Uchiha Sasuke realised that he was wrong, and the innocent had paid the price. He winced as an injury suddenly pained him and thought ironically that even the guilty were paying the price for his stupidity. All around him were the dead from Fire, Wind, Lightning, Cloud and even Mist. These people had banded together to stop Uchiha Madara, and now they were dead.

A small comfort, so was the madman who'd started this, all those years ago. Madara lay dead, killed by his own tool, Sasuke himself, but also Naruto. At the last, the two former squad mates had teamed up to kill the biggest threat to this world, and it had cost Uzumaki Naruto his life. But he'd said at the end that at least he was glad that Sasuke had come to his senses, even if it was almost too late.

Sasuke glared at the makeshift grave he'd created for his erstwhile friend. It was too late, as far as he was concerned anyway. It was too late because all of these people'd had to die for him to realise what an idiot he'd been. That damned Uchiha pride had refused to allow him to see the truth, he'd been blinded by his anger and hatred, the need for revenge...

Well, now he'd gotten it, and it was just as bitter a pill to swallow as the one he'd been force fed after Itachi's death.

Sasuke sighed and decided that he would leave now. There were still a few active jutsu's, the powerful sort that lingered after the caster's death. Most of them were Madara's, since not many people had the power for those kinds of jutsus, only seals ever really lasted past a death. Right now, a lot of stray chakra crackled in the air, leaking out of the slowly fading jutsus. He turned and walked away, leaving the battlefield behind him.

Where was he to go, though? No one knew of his last minute change of heart, and even if they did, he doubted that they would give a damn. He was a wanted man, a rogue with an execution order hanging over his head. There were no old team mates waiting for him, no new team mates, and no Akatsuki either. They were all gone, never to return. He was on his own.

Sasuke winced once more as one of his injuries made itself known. He had to find someone to heal him, though who would, really? In any case, Sasuke continued walking, until something caught his attention. It was a cloud of energy, though he could sense chakra in it. Madara's chakra, to be exact. Curious, Sasuke stepped forward and activated his Sharingan, wondering why it was still relatively solid when all the other jutsus flying around were nothing more than wisps in the wind. What he saw shocked him.

It was like he was looking through a portal, a window of some sort. There were people walking around, seeming to be going about their business. But where they were right here, Sasuke recognised the landscape, though it didn't look like it should now, with all the fires and the flattened trees. In fact, now that he thought about it, Madara had been running this way when Naruto and himself were about to finish him off. What was this jutsu?

And then he saw something that stopped his breath and made his heartbeat rush in his ears. "Mother?" he whispered, and indeed, there stood Uchiha Mikoto, laughing happily and being held in the arms of an equally happy man. "Father?"

What was going on? Was this some kind of window to the past? How had Madara created it? Sasuke had so many questions, unfortunately the one with the answers was dead, but maybe if he just stepped through…

What was he thinking? Sasuke knew he shouldn't trust anything tainted by Madara, so he stepped back, not wanting to get mixed up in whatever that maniac had done. But then there was the sound of an explosion, and Sasuke whirled around to see shinobi headed towards him.

"There he is!" one shouted. "That's the one who brought all this down on us! Him and Madara!"

"Should we kill him, or arrest him?" another asked.

"Don't be stupid," the first one said. "We kill him."

They were advancing on him now, and Sasuke knew he was too weak to get away from them. So he did the only thing he could do, the thing that he'd already decided he wouldn't do. He leapt into the cloud of energy and chakra, praying to Kami that it really did lead to the past and that he would see his parents once more.

Was it good? Please review and tell me. Next chapter will be longer, this is just the prologue, after all. Jst so you know, Madara made that portal to the past to escape, but it's unstable now, especially since he's dead. So Sasuke won't end up where he thinks.