disclaimer: if I was the master and commander of the Naruto-verse. Hinata wouldn't be some shy weakling, Sasuke wouldn't be seemingly evil, and Naruto wouldn't be a harebrained one-trick pony. but I guess that's why I'm an avid fanfictionor....It gives me the power to change
Underneath The Underneath
He laid in the hospital staring blankly at the ceiling. He hadn't moved since they had found him for the second time inside the once busy Uchiha compound. The place still reeked of death, the bodies may have been burned but the smell still lingered paralyzing his senses bring him back to that traumatic day.
He couldn't believe it. His family all slaughtered mercilessly by his brother. His own brother. Every last one of them strewn across the streets soaking in their own blood.
To test his god forsaken skills his strength. That's what his brother, nay the murderer..no worse the kin slayer had said 'to test my strength.' Still the words haunted him. Then, as if to throw salt in fresh wounds; insult to injury that kin slayer had the gall to leave him alive. To hate. To grow stronger through hate. To leave him to fester in hatred all by himself.
No. Not by himself. He gave a slight grunt at the irony. The murdering kin slayer may have been strong enough to massacre the whole clan, but he had left alive one more than he intended. His aunt still lived.
Stricken from the family logs and banned from even uttering her name. She had left Konoha. some say in complete shame. and on top of that This estranged aunt was supposedly a very talented shinobi. Trained by the Legendary slug sanin Tsunade herself. At least that was what the nurses gossip whispered. He had endured their incessant twattle throughout his entire stay at the leaf's hospital, and it angered him. Here he was Sasuke Uchiha, survivor and sole witness to the Uchiha massacre, and they gossiped as if that would somehow makeup ..for the..the..shortage. Sasuke thought bitterly.
.Knock. Knock. Knock.
"Uchiha-san your aunt is here now" the nurse said as she opened the door. She glanced worriedly at the bed getting no acknowledgement from the occupant. She reluctantly glanced back into the hallway talking in hushed tones to someone.
"His vitals are all normal, no serious wounds of any kind. On paper he is completely and utterly fine, yet he hasn't responded to anyone."
"Hai. you are dismissed," the dark haired woman brushed past the nurse with a curt nod.
The woman walked with the grace of one born of noble blood. She seemed to exude authority as she slid gracefully in to the chair to the left of Sasuke's bed. He looked at her out of the corner of his eye with a slight nod of approval. She carried herself with the right amount of dignity expected from his clan. She looked the part as well, with her high cheekbones and flawlessly tanned skin. He had half expected a mongrel the way the nurses prattled on around the hospital, as if this woman was the diseased bane of the Uchiha clan.
For awhile the woman just sat there saying nothing. She just watched him intently as if evaluating his very caliber of worth, and in essence - she was.
"You have only just begun you training at the academy correct," her smooth voice left no doubt that she wasn't expecting him to reply. Which in itself was a blessing he had no want to speak. "knowing that fool of father of your.."
"Do not speak of my family" Sasuke cut her off with an icy glare
Her eyes told him what her body and face did not display. The intense red of the Sharingan eyes starred into his own eyes with dangerous amounts of contempt. Sasuke's own eyes widen in fear as he realized these eyes were different from the usual Sharingan his clan had and more resembled the eyes his brother had looked at him with. It was this resemblance that had instilled that same fear in him that his brother had.
The woman snapped her fingers and the sound seemed to reverberate throughout his entire body. Suddenly the world was bathed in red and black and he was standing in front of his aunt the interior of the hospital completely gone.
"What the hell is happening" the words slipped out before he could stop them.
"Stop your incessant panic boy" It was his aunts voice but she had not moved her lips. She stood opposite him staring unblinkingly at him with an intensity that dared him to look away yet kept him frozen to his spot as well.
"Do not interrupt me when I speak to you."
Sasuke was frozen with fear as he seemed to hear the words not with his ears but with is entire body. The red world seemed to dissolve with her last word, as if blown away like sand in the wind. He was back in the hospital laying in the exact same position, his eyes still locked with his aunts, who had not moved an inch.
He gasped and abruptly sat up with that realization.
"Genjutsu" he whispered softly.
"Are you ready to listen" she asked with a nod of affirmation stressing the last word.
She wanted him to listen only. That much was clear without him needing her subtly obvious clues. He merely nodded once not trusting himself to speak sarcastically at this woman, she had trapped him in a Genjutsu that was so eerily similar to the one his own brother had cast upon him. She was truly of the Uchiha blood that much was utterly clear.
"Your brother's actions are inexcusable," she said offhandedly pointedly ignoring Sasuke's clenched fist. He already knew this and needed no help coming to that conclusion himself . Though he held back is sarcastic grunt to the obvious.
"There are secrets within our clan that until you are of age you would not be privy to"
"And what would a banished Uchiha know of what I, the son of the Head of the noble Uchiha clan, am privy too" Sasuke glared at her despite his fear, he could not keep his tongue in check. How dare this woman, who knew nothing of his family, try and insinuate he was any kind of ignorant.
"Fugaku already had an heir, you were merely his spare, not worthy enough to train until the talented Itachi started to show signs of duplicity. " Her smug tone and smirk made Sasuke's eyes grow wide with shock at the harsh words.
There was undeniable truth in her words though. His father, Fugaku Uchiha, never really showed any interest in him at all. Sasuke's thoughts flew abruptly to the one and only time his father took time to train Sasuke. A few weeks before his brother, Itachi, had betrayed the family in a colossally bloody manner, his father tried to teach him the clans famed fire jutsu. He remembered the joy he felt to be finally acknowledged by his father. Could it be possible the only reason his father showed interest was because on some inane level he had sensed that Itachi was no longer loyal to the clan.
These thoughts flew through Sasuke's head with such intensity that he grabbed his head and shook it violently as if to somehow banish such ideas from his mind. He looked at his aunt, actually looked, his eyes pleading with her to take her words back to somehow deny his very own thoughts. She merely looked at him with a slight remorse of her words.
"Is it so hard to believe that my little brother is not such a great man," she whispered as if to comfort him with just words. "I have grown up in the clan for far more years than you have even been alive boy," her voce gathering more strength with each word.
"but I was the clan head's son." as if saying the words would make everything somehow better.
"Fugaku is not the true clan head" Sasuke's head whipped around sharply to stare at his aunt.
"It was I who was meant to be the head of the Uchiha clan, but I was banished for imparting secrets about the Sharingan to someone not of Uchiha blood." she admitted solemnly.
"You are a traitor than" he replied coldly at her confession.
"I suppose if you had no knowledge of the circumstances you would see me as a such but no, I was following the Sandaime and Yondaime Hokage's orders. Train a man that was given, not born with, the Sharingan, and I did, without consulting the Uchiha elders, I trained this man in the use of our eyes."
Sasuke if even possible looked even more disgusted at her than he previously was with this new confession. Someone was given his family's treasured Dōjutsu, then of course the clan would refuse to train him, he was only 7 and he knew that. If she was the true heiress to his clan she should have known that too.
"If you were our heiress you would have known that the orders you were given were of clan matters and are therefore not any business of the Hokage's"
"You truly are the son of Fugaku," she smiled sadly at him. "Our clan had been planning a coup d'état, the elders wanted to over throw the Hokage's power for a very long time. They had planned for a civil war"
"you are lying" Sasuke tried to not put any weight in her words, but it rang true. When he thought back to all the conversations he had overheard added with this little piece of knowledge, those confusing meetings had finally made sense.
"The Hokage had found out and was planning on banishing Fugaku and the elders from the village, I know this because the Yondaime approached me to return to the village and take up the mantle of head Uchiha,"
Sasuke widened his eyes. If the Hokage had in fact succeeded in their plan to ban his father, the Uchiha would have been at war with the leaf. There would have been inner turmoil in the clan between those who were inherently peaceful and the more pompous of Shinobi. As noble as the Uchihas were, Sasuke was under no delusion just how power hungry his clan was behind their smiles. The wolves would have surely shed their lambskin during the first sign of strife.
If what his aunt said was true, his father and his immediate family would have been put up for execution, just to negate any tarnish on the Uchiha's good name. His father would have been the clan's scapegoat, and in extention he would have been. Though the coup would have still been there lying in wait for another time to strike.
"Was our clan assinanted on the Hokage's orders" he asked timidly not sure if he wanted the answer. He knew his brother seemed to be a loyal Konoha Shinobi and he was a member of ANBU although that was supposed to be a secret. Sasuke couldn't help but think that maybe Itachi was a little more loyal to Konoha than his own clan.
"Do you wish me to lie to you" His aunt looked at him questionably as if sensing his reluctance to know the truth. He looked at her for a minute before he gave his head a slight shake.
She took a minute to carefully choose her words.
"The Yondaime did not personally order the slaying of the Uchiha clan"
Sasuke eyes glared at her suspiciously. Her words seemed to hint that there was an underlying message.
"Did he order it unofficially than," Sasuke asked hesitantly. Was his village really even more deceitful than he had originally assumed it was.
"No, the Yondaime, did not order it" she said. Something in the way she said it and the look in her eyes, told him there was something deeper going on here.
"What about the Sandaime then." his aunt smiled proudly at Sasuke's question. He's finally got it, she thought fondly.
"Come Sasuke-kun, we have much to prepare at the compound. I supervised the clean-up myself before I came here, but you must be there for the cleansing" she stood up and offered her hand to the boy. Sasuke looked at her questionably, had he asked the right question. Then why didn't she answer him. He thought she was being extremely rude. Suddenly another thought gripped him.
"uhmm... obasan?" Sasuke looked to floor with embarrassment as he took his aunt's hand. "what is your name?" heat rushed to his cheeks. He couldn't believe that he had held a whole conversation with this woman and had never known her name. She was for all intensive purposes the only family he had left, and he forgot his manners. He knew his mother would be the one who would disapprove of his carelessness the most. Sasuke somehow felt that forgetting the manners his own mother took the time and care to instill upon him his entire life was almost like forgetting her.
She looked at Sasuke with a kind smile.
"Kamiko. Kamiko Uchiha"