Sasuke sat on his front stoop. He was hunched over with horrible posture, resting his chin in his palms with his elbows balanced on his knees. He was still wearing a hospital gown. There hadn't been anybody to bring him clothes at the hospital so he'd walked home in them.
There wasn't anybody.
"Why?" he whispered out into the empty, blood-spattered compound. Only the wind answered him. Sasuke closed his eyes shut as tight as possible and tried to imagine that the wind was voices, that Kaa-chan would open the door and call him for dinner at any moment. Then, the wind settled and he smelled the antiseptic that the ANBU apparently used. He hadn't known the smell before now, but he bet he'd never forget after this. Sasuke opened his eyes and sat up.
The walls of the buildings in the compound were browned in splatters from every angle. Half of the pathways had been dug up or burned somehow. He'd had trouble recognizing the way home. Somehow, even though Kaa-chan's garden hadn't survived, the tiny blue forget-me-nots in the ditch were clinging to life, unperturbed. Sasuke stood up. He was barefoot, and his feet were dirty. He'd ditched the hospital slippers in some dumpster on the way to the compound. The grasses and weeds were ticklish against his instep. He kept his eyes on his feet as he walked, on the dirt covering his toes. Rather than stepping on the dirt and stone paths that were half-gone, he hopped from patch of grass to patch of weeds to patch of different grasses. Each step had to be measured to keep from crushing any of the flowers.
The ditch was about as tall as him, with a slope that he wouldn't call gentle, but also wasn't a straight drop either. Kaa-chan hadn't ever let him play down here. Sasuke slid down the side of the ditch and skidded to a stop in a patch of forget-me-nots as tall as his knees. Almost all of them were blue like a robin's egg, but on each bush was one or two buds, not even so large as his littlest pinky nail, that blushed pink in the setting sun.
Sasuke looked up along the path of the ditch. It followed up the hill, with motionless brown puddles bundled along the larger dips. The ditch meandered out of sight at the top of the hill at the very back of the Uchiha grounds.
The first step he took startled him. He hadn't realized he was going to walk up the ditch, and the splash of old water was cold and loud in the emptiness of the…his…
Sasuke walked. He walked as the sun went orange and then red and then purple. He walked as the sky went black and torches were lit in the distance of Konoha. He walked as the stars came out overhead. He'd never been able to see them so well. Nii-san had always said that the stars hid from the lights of human-kind. Now his home was dark and the stars weren't hiding from him.
The moon was well in the sky by the time he crested the hill, soaked and shivering. Here on the very edges of the Uchiha land he was confused to find a tiny little shrine set against the base of an unremarkable tree. On the branches of this shrine tree, this single tree indistinguishable from any other in the Konoha woods, hung a tiny red paper-lantern with the Uchiha fan painted on it. He had no idea how it could be lit. He glared out at the surrounding woods as he rushed over to the shrine, half expecting someone with a box of matches to leap out, until he got a closer look at the shrine and stumbled to a stop. The stones of the shrine were stacked to look like a little house, and from the back 'doorway' a tiny wire climbed up the tree like a vine until it reached the lantern.
Sasuke brought himself to two steps from the shrine and bowed at the waist. Then he walked forward and touched a finger to the wire. It pinched him! He jerked his finger back and stuck it in his mouth. Maybe 'pinched' wasn't the right word, it also nearly burned…shocked! It shocked him, like when you roll around on a rug and then touch a doorknob but worse.
The lantern used the lightning from the shrine to stay lit without any of the Uchiha needing to bring a flame all the way over the hill. No one had been here to light the lantern after all.
Sasuke sat down heavily in front of the shrine. This little stone house and paper lantern, with its electric wire and tiny light, had outlived his family by weeks.
Sasuke stared at the tiny stone house and dug his fingers into the mulch of dead leaves. If the shrine used flame, it would be dead by now. His family had been like that. They burned, passionate and short-lived, bright and sharp. Now they were extinguished. Sasuke felt scorched along his edges, from that hottest flame of them all. Nii-san wanted him to set himself aflame, get the eyes and become stronger, the new hottest flame of the noble Uchiha just so that he could have a challenge. He wanted Sasuke's life to be consumed in those flames he'd used to murder Kaa-chan and Tou-san. Sasuke's hands were getting wet, drip by drip, as they clenched in the dirt beneath his face. His eyes felt watery and cool. It was the first soothing touch he'd known in weeks.
Tou-san had said that he'd know his Sharingan had come because it would burn. That he'd kill someone, feel scared and angry and other horrible in-between things, and then his eyes would burn and he'd see how to kill them. Nii-san had refused to talk about it at all. His Nii-san cared more about his brilliant eyes than their family.
Maybe, the Uchihas eyes burned something out of them, something kind. Or maybe it burned something into them, something that made them hateful enough inside to murder every child Sasuke had ever played with.
He'd always been jealous of the kids who got to play in the ditch. Little girls with black eyes beaming and tossing off their shoes to pick dandelions, little boys just like Sasuke throwing pebbles into puddles. When Sasuke had come along, they'd always shout for him to come join them, but he'd scoffed at them. He'd been disdainful at the thought of playing silly games when he could be learning how to be a Shinobi like his Nii-san, the best ninja in Konoha. None of those kids had gained the eyes. All of their parents, the ones who would only nod at him with stony faces, they had the eyes.
Sasuke knelt before the shrine and touched his forehead to the ground. Everything was so freezing cold. He'd need to go back soon. He'd have to dry off, and find clean clothes, and get into his un-made bed in his blood-stained house. Before he left, though, he had time for one thing yet.
"I promise, little electric spirit of this shrine," he whispered into the soft dirt and fallen leaves, "I will never gain the eyes. I will never pass them on. And I will make sure the eyes end in my brother, so that they can't hurt anybody anymore. I will be the last Uchiha, and see to the end of the Copy-Wheel Clan. Then all of the hatred here can stop, and my family can rest peacefully. I promise, little shrine."
Sasuke looked up from the ground. Nothing had changed. The lantern still glowed, the shrine still sat, and the tree still stood. Everything felt different, though. Sasuke looked over his surroundings once, twice, three times trying to find what was different. The world felt like it should have warped, somehow, around the promise he'd made. Then, his eyes returned to the little glowing lantern and he relaxed. The lantern made everything make sense. This little shrine over the hill hadn't changed at all. It was him. He felt lighter, and warmer. Like that static wire was feeding him with light as well.
Sasuke stood up and took two steps back. He bowed respectfully, and thanked the little shrine with the oldest, fanciest-sounding words he knew. Then he turned and started walking back up over the hill to his home.
The grassy slope was black in the night-time world. He kept stumbling over unseen sticks and rocks and divots. For some reason, despite being physically fit, his breath was coming in harsh pants as he shoved himself step over step up the hill to the ruins of his childhood home. In Uchiha tradition, mourning meant burning things. Sasuke, though, didn't think he could stand the thought of fire anymore. If he was the only one left to put the Uchiha to rest, then he refused to set them aflame to do so, as they had burned in life. They were supposed to be sleeping.
Maybe, if he left all of the doors and windows open, then little weeds and flowers would grow from the bloodstains in the wooden floor. Dead leaves would float in, and the barn cat might move into one of the cupboards near the refrigerator where it'd be warm. It would be kind of like burying his family, like some other clans did. The village had dealt with the corpses of his family. He didn't know what had happened to them beyond that they'd been burned. Hokage-sama had made careful pains to emphasize that the eyes had been burned as well.
Sasuke crested the hill and looked down on the pool of black which his moonlight-silver houses were floating upon. They looked like ghosts. His first thought was to hate that they looked like this, but then he felt how the hatred burned deep in his chest and swallowed a mouthful of foul spit with a tremulous grimace. Anything was better than hatred, than the hatred that killed his Clan. So, Sasuke threw himself down the hill. He rolled, wincing and pushing himself on as bits of wood and stone dug into his back and stomach. He somersaulted, twisted, and the momentum of his fall sent him down to the bottom of the hill in less than half a minute. He let himself go floppy as he slowed to a stop and ended up face down in the dust of a path at the edge of the property.
Slowly, he pushed himself upright and yanked his hospital slip back down over his thighs. It felt very grimy, by now, but he didn't care. Feeling cold and dizzy was so much better than burning inside. He stood up on wobbly legs and looked around him. It was hard to tell in the dark, but he seemed to be down the street from his house, near the home of a family he'd only known in passing. There had been an older couple with a shinobi chunin daughter. He'd never been to their home. He wondered if their daughter had tried to protect them, what jutsu she'd tried to use as Nii-san cut her down. Whether she'd watched her parents die or if they'd watched her die.
Their home where they'd died belonged to Sasuke now. It was his responsibility to help their ghosts forget the harsh flames of his brother, that burned them until they were gone.
So Sasuke decided to take advantage of his newfound warmth and lightness. He walked around the house and opened up the simple wooden front door, propping it open with a stone from the garden. They had been growing lavender. Maybe one of them liked to make tea. He walked inside the cold, empty home with only he and his breath breaking the strange silence. His dirty bare feet made pitter-pats against the wood and rusted-blood. He decided to walk upstairs first. The staircase was rickety, and little drips of blood had dried when they ran down the staircase like the puddles from the ditch had when Sasuke had stepped in them. Sasuke ignored the furniture, the unmade beds, the papers and toothbrushes as he went through the top floor and opened every single window as wide as it would go. The stars looked even brighter, even closer without the smudged, smeared glass in the way.
Downstairs, Sasuke did the same thing and more. He opened every window, propped open every door, and also plugged the sink. When it rained, the water might blow in through the window in the kitchen and fill up the sink with a bit of fresh rain water. Then the birds would have a place to bathe.
Sasuke walked back out of the house feeling a little bit lighter than he had before he'd gone inside. He turned back to look at the building he'd never gone into before. The Uchiha fan was painted on the side, slightly smeared with a bloody handprint. Somehow, Sasuke thought, with the windows open and dead leaves already blowing through the threshold, it was easier to imagine the years from now that would wear away the paint and the pain smeared on it. Someday there would be no sign it had been here at all.
Sasuke opened every single house he passed on his way home. It was barely half a dozen, and he knew there were dozens more to fix in the morning. However, when he came upon his own house his eyes drifted into blurs momentarily as he yawned so long he felt his jaw crack. It was time to be finished for the evening. No more burning with determination for him, not ever.
On his way to bed, Sasuke opened every window in the house. He opened the window in Kaa-chan's kitchen, the one in Tou-san's study, even the one in their bedroom.
He left Nii-san's bedroom door shut.
Then he was back in his old room. His academy homework from that day was still on his desk, half-finished. His bed covers were rumpled up around the foot of his mattress. His dirty clothes were in the little basket behind the door. It was like nothing had even happened. He was the only different thing in the room.
Sasuke did not look at the mirror as he peeled off the soaked-through slip of a hospital gown. It was covered in dirt stains and grass stains, half see-through with damp. He dropped it into the basket with his dirty clothes. It smelled like dirt, and grass, and puddles. Like growing things, fresh and dirty and healthy. His pajamas were laid on his pillow in a crumpled lump from where he'd thrown them weeks ago. He picked up his sleep romper and shook it harshly over his floor. A tiny black spider fell out and scuttled away under his desk. Sasuke watched it run with an odd pang of sympathy. It probably thought Sasuke was going to kill it, just because he could. A lot of things probably thought that, someday, he'd kill things just to test if he could, gain power and take lives with red eyes and a hateful expression. Like a monster.
Little girls were scared of spiders. Standing in his dark bedroom, putting one foot after another into his black cotton romper with the Uchiha fan embroidered on the left chest pocket, Sasuke thought that it'd be nice if someday spiders weren't scared at him, because they'd know that he was better than the Uchiha before him. That he wasn't a monster. And that he didn't think they were monsters either.
Sasuke knew monsters.
Tonight he knew he'd dream of one. And it would call him 'Little Brother'.