A/N: Hi there! I always said I would write something serious for this site, and so I did! I can't decide if I love or hate this, but it's here and you're reading it! This is kind of an experimental piece, based on some massacre AUness-ish.
Things you need to know for purposes of this fic—on the night of the massacre, Itachi decided to take Sasuke along when he left the village, explaining the actions of the village and Uchiha clan. Also, Sai got stuck onto Team Seven a couple years early. Because Akatsuki was moving and Danzo was worried and so stuck a Root member on Naruto's team. Yeah. And cause, twelve year old Sai, you know? The present tense sections in this fic would take place instead of the Land of the Waves arc, while the past tense sections are flashbacky type things.
Ah, and one final note: as this is an experimental piece, there are several things I must apologize for: generally being confusing and screwed up point of view towards the end, as well as possible bad characterization, rambling, inaccuracies of facts related to the series, and/or fails at using Japanese words. I've hopefully eliminated these as much as possible, but do let me know of any mistakes and I will attempt to correct them.
It's an easy mission, Team Seven's first C rank. The details—investigate a suspicious building on the country border. The reported threats—possible bandit contacts, maybe traps. The only complication—a man who comes clothed in black and red clouds.
Everything about this man is otherworldly. Everything about this man is fear.
"Back!" shouts their sensei, removing the forehead protector from his own bit of stolen legends.
(such a miracle… from such a cursed clan, that Obito was the person he was...)
The symbol of our clan: the fire that fans the flames, he said with a smile, looking over at the awed eyes of his little brother. Because that was the Uchiha clan—their fire, their Sharingan, their pride. Their will burned.
His smile is easy, gentle, and that too is fear.
"An interesting team you have here, Kakashi-senpai. If I didn't know better, I would think that one of your higher ups is playing games with me."
Steel to steel, eye to eyes. Three children watch their (supposedly) invincible teacher clash against the man in the cloak, whose pinwheeling eyes are so at odds with his serenity.
"Why, look there, at that boy." And a purple nailed finger falls on Sai, dark haired, dark eyed Sai. "I suppose you wouldn't have thought anything of the fact that he looks so much like one of my bloodline, given how much else there is to be suspicious of, but perhaps someone thought I could use a reminder. Fortunately—"
A knife, pressed against Sai's throat. They could be twins, the two children connected by the blade. Only, when the holder of the knife looks (glares) out at the other children, his eyes bleed into red, and they whirl.
"—I have not forgotten," Uchiha Itachi concludes.
Only they always forgot, the Uchiha clan, the villages, everyone, really, all caught up in the glory of those eyes. This: from the start, flames exist to burn, to char.
One man (boy? Not anymore) learned the truth. And through the Mangekyou, the grace of the goddess of the moon, he showed it to his brother.
The black eyes of a man, a man they loved, looking down, down, telling him to give himself to the (dying) flames. Black hair, lazily drifting through dark water. Black eyes, unseeing now, glassily staring at the night sky. Three black spikes, piercing a sea of red. And the final touch—the black flames, a true piece of irony.
On that night, he destroyed the clan. On that night, he lived up to its destiny.
(Black flames—it's one and the same.)
Distraction here can kill, but the man with silver hair cannot stop his mismatched eyes from widening. Too many ghosts, now. But what else is there, for those who live among the dead?
Kakashi puts the pieces together, even if he does not understand the picture. Back then, one body, never found, and now, a boy in black, showing those dreadful eyes.
"Uchiha Sasuke," he says, and the blade in his hand skitters along its twin in the hands of his enemy. The man gives a serene nod.
"My brother."
And the pink girl and the golden boy—they don't understand. The boy with the knife at his throat—he doesn't either, for different reasons.
"Listen to my brother," the boy—Sasuke—says. He looks at them over the hilt of a dagger.
The red-black brothers… but what did anyone expect?
They're not quite sure how it happens, but there is something involving a white haired man on a frog who chases off the elder brother, and the number one surprising ninja, who uses his own red power to protect his teammates.
(Red now, but perhaps one day he will turn it gold.)
Regardless, there is now a blindfolded boy tied to a chair in a hotel room as Team Seven watches. And Kakashi is beginning to think he has had more than enough of foul mouthed twelve year olds.
"It seemed like you knew him, Kakashi-sensei," ventures Sakura finally, speaking timidly against the snarls of the captured boy. "And his brother."
Their tale really is nothing new, not for ninja, and so he looks over at Sasuke with a flat black stare. Their eyes are another story altogether, and his body is feeling the price. "You could say that, Sakura-chan. In fact, you might even know them yourself. Because a long time ago, Sasuke-chan here was one of your classmates."
Oh, good, that gets a rise out of the child (and Sai probably picks up a few new insults). It also causes recognition to bloom in green eyes.
"I remember there being an Uchiha Sasuke," Sakura says, and she can still look so sad. She hasn't lost that. "But he died, a few months after we started at the academy." Try explaining to a group of children that an entire clan is now dead. Try explaining that one of their classmates had been murdered by his older brother. Some truths can't be softened. They still remember.
"Yes, as part of the massacre five years ago," Kakashi says. "The Uchiha clan, one of the most prestigious in Konoha, was wiped out in a single night. The killer was found to be one of their own; their very brightest star, in fact—Uchiha Itachi. He slaughtered every last member of his family, right down to his seven year old little brother, Sasuke."
And that, of all things, gets the boy to stop lashing out and focus over at them. But when the boy speaks, it's a still a snarl, wild and animal. "Don't you talk about my brother!"
Only Kakashi stopped listening to foolish, cold-eyed boys many years ago.
Sakura spares a glance for the child, silhouetted against the window. Then she turns back to Kakashi and asks, "That was that man you were fighting, right?"
"Correct, Sakura-chan," he says, giving her a nod. "After his betrayal, Itachi left the village, becoming one of Konoha's most dangerous missing-nins. He was also believed to be the last living member of the Uchiha clan. However, in light of certain hostages who possess the kekkai genkai of the Uchiha clan, the sharingan, it appears that there are two surviving Uchihas. And more to the point, Sasuke-kun here is following the murderer of his clan." And he looks over at the three children of his team, and wonders if any of them really understand the idea of family. (He didn't, at that age.)
"But that's crazy!" There's the roar, because that's just how Naruto deals with things. "If your brother killed your family, then why are you hanging around with him still?"
The dark haired boy flares back, just as hot. Fire. "I said, don't talk about my brother, you Konoha scum! You don't know anything about him!"
"Then do enlighten us, Sasuke-kun," Kakashi says lightly. If there's any way the boy can explain what seems to be a tremendous mess of tangled, violent histories. "I myself find it remarkable that Itachi left you alive."
And he's looking for madness, and he finds it. The boy changes like lightning, only instead of a blaze he draws his fire in, and when he speaks his words only hold a deep smoldering bitterness. "The only remarkable thing here is Nii-san. He should be a hero in that village. Only here you are, trying to kill him."
"A hero!" And Kakashi can see the faces of heroes in the golden boy's mind—the faces on a mountain, because that's what they've been taught heroes are. "Heroes don't do stuff like that!"
A laugh, now, soft and getting colder. Naruto's so fired up, that he doesn't notice how quiet it is in the room.
(Like ice.)
"That's where you're wrong," says Sasuke.
And he's only saying what Kakashi would not.
Sasuke tilts his head to the side, and his thin lips twist into almost a smile. "Should I tell you the story?" he asks, and they're looking into the stare of a blindfold. "Yes, perhaps I should. What do I care if it brings the village crashing down on your heads?"
"What do you mean?" Sakura asks. She speaks now with a wary calm. But the smirk grows, filling with frozen malice.
"I mean, Itachi did what he did on orders from your messed up village's leaders. Including your beloved Hokage." (They tried to teach him their lessons, but he only ever respected one person.) "And they ordered it because the screwed up Uchiha clan was planning a rebellion that would have plunged the village into war. We couldn't have that, of course, so everyone went and placed everything on Itachi's shoulders. Just like they had always done. Well, he took care of it, and it cost him everything. It made him a disgrace in the village he had saved! In this sick little play of Konoha's, he's the only one who did anything right!"
And he takes a deep breath. Then he sits there in the sun and ropes, and smiles.
Kakashi watches Naruto's hands clench into fists.
"You're joking!" the golden boy shouts, standing up. "The village would never do anything as twisted as ask someone to kill their own family!"
And again the teacher doesn't have to say a thing, because the students already have the answers. "The village keeps plenty of secrets, Naruto-kun," Sai says softly. "If it means protecting itself and preserving the peace, there is very little I believe the village wouldn't do." (We've done our job well. The village is still here, isn't it?)
"Clever, aren't you?" sneers the blinded boy. "Yes, your village will do anything for its own preservation. Itachi sacrificed everything he had for that purpose. Or, he was supposed to. But there is one thing that he saved."
"Ah," says the teacher to himself.
And now the boy's words are soft.
"Me. He killed everyone, except… me. On that night, that night that changed everything, I saw Itachi's hell through his own eyes. I saw that everything he had done had been for the sake of peace. But though he believed that the village had done the only thing it could, it had broken his trust, tried to use him, and he would not leave me there. And so when he left, I came with him. With Itachi, I was safe, and I grew strong." They can almost see the red eyes, holding all their gazes. "I love my brother, and he loves me. And do you see? Your precious village would have destroyed that."
Should Kakashi have protected them from this? Too late now. The bound, defiant boy is showing them his broken world, terrible and sharp; piercing, because it rings true. Time to grow up, he knows, but maybe he doesn't want them to. He remembers how he grew up.
(One red eye—a gift. Only, they were always just a curse, weren't they?)
The moon was now their light, as the two brothers sped away from the village. This was the night that changed everything, and from then on, they would belong to the night. Belong to the moon.
He carried his younger brother on his back, and the boy was too quiet, too quiet by far. But his grip was tight, and he did not shake. By this, Itachi knew he had chosen right. Fate could have taken far more than his brother's voice.
(Defiance, it whispers.)
Through trees they flew, crows, ravens. And he would never, never be happy about what he had done, but he could not deny that there was something about all this that felt right. It was irony, the law their clan lived by.
Perhaps the man who flew out of moonshadows to join the two brothers would have understood, but Itachi would never, ever, ask. Mask, eyes, reputation? Maybe it was just that Itachi knew how fragile legends truly were.
"Should I ask?" Uchiha Madara said, as they flew from darkened branch to darkened branch, "Or will you simply tell me?"
Well, they weren't dead yet.
"Sasuke," he said softly, "Look at him."
And the silent boy took his head from his brother's back to look at the mask. The pure moonlight fell on a small, pale face. Into crimson eyes.
"Well now," Madara said, a deep, shadowy whisper. "So he's an Uchiha after all."
"The Uchiha are dead," His voice was quiet, and firm. "The only thing he must be now is my brother."
Madara laughed, a quiet, growling sound that resonated with the trees. "Why, you almost sound like you've thought this out. You know the kind of monsters Akatsuki will be full of. Do you really intend to place a child in the midst of all that? It will give me a good show."
"He would not be allowed to remain a child no matter what," Itachi said, perhaps sadly, perhaps solemnly. (Because he wasn't). The boy looked up at the stars, and then turned his face back into the dark, bloodstained fabric of his brother's shirt. "And while he might find peace in the village, where would he find strength? From fear? From hatred? From a terrible loss—a betrayal!—that he would not understand? Ignorance is more deadly than anything. But we possess the eyes to see through illusions."
And Madara enjoyed a sense of humor because it made him unpredictable. His voice conveyed amusement, because it seemed his little cousins were unpredictable too.
"And you, Sasuke-chan?" Madara asked, mask glinting like fey-fire in the dark. "Are you alright with going with the man who killed the rest of your family?" Killed the dream of happiness. "With being thrown into a den of killers?" Not fair at all, of course, but it always was a question of beating a rigged game.
Both men caught the flinch. But the moonlight revealed set lips, and eyes that never belonged on a boy. They had already seen so much horror, and each had only one black mark. What would they have witnessed, by the time three swirled through the red? "I won't stay in that village." Because that's where everything bad happened. Because that's where the bad people (the corpses) are. (Only they're everywhere.) "I will follow Nii-san."
The first words he had said since they left the land with the red sky. The boy left everything behind in that world—words, tears, ties: to village, clan, parents. What he had now were two sentences, a pair of eyes, and the back he was clinging to.
"Have it your way, then," said Madara, shaking his head at the silly, intractable children. "The boy gets to be the little Akatsuki brat. And here I was, saving that title for you, Itachi-chan. Ah, such a shame—but I'll still get what I want in the end." And Itachi wonders if the man realizes how lonely those words are. But Itachi made the same choice Madara did, did he not? Destroy the clan, because they're wrong.
"Ah, but just so you know," Madara said, an absent reminder, quickly fading into the silence of night, "this won't be easy. For either of you."
Itachi almost laughed. Imagine that.
(Even though Madara knew how to make good on threats)
Kakashi herds the children into the next room over, leaving behind a bunshin to hear rants that don't come. (Even ninja children aren't supposed to be present for interrogations, he remembers now; although really, it shouldn't be because of what the prisoner might say.)
Twilight is falling, soft and amber through the windows. It casts shadows on the eyes of the three children. He knows the words to say—you're ninja, so act like it—only, he stopped listening to those speeches when he was thirteen. He's not sure if he remembers how the words go.
(And who came up with ninja rule twenty-five? Did they have any idea what they were doing?)
"That's crazy," says Naruto, the golden boy. He's staring out the window, watching the late sun flickering on leaves. "The village and the Uchiha clan both. It's so messed up."
"The village was just trying to prevent a war," says Sai in his quiet voice, looking down, down, beneath the floor of the hotel to where roots hold the earth together. "And the Uchiha just wanted to escape oppression. Everyone was doing what they had to for the sake of their future. Uchiha Itachi was a sacrifice for that."
Reciting what they already know—which seems to be nearly everything. Sasuke gave out details in cutting little bits—shuriken he was throwing, tearing into the village elders, the Uchiha clan (his own father!), but most of all, Kakashi's students. It's probably somewhat of a coping mechanism for the boy, Kakashi suspects, using hate to emotionally detach himself from the loss of family and belief. But the information's there in spite of the emotion that comes with it, and the fact that Sasuke's alive suggests its truth. Kakashi will be having a long conversation with the Sandaime when they get back to the village.
"But to think," says Sakura, hugging her knees, face turned to the fading sunglow, "the village, the Hokage—they could order something like that. Can we—are we still going to fight Itachi-san?"
"And what about Sasuke?" asks Naruto, looking around for answers. But Kakashi won't give them, not quite yet. (He'll give them when he has them.) "What are we going to do with him?"
(Tsukyomi inverts black and white, Sasuke tells them, an absent detail. And then it turns the sky red.)
"It's clear that he has no love for the village," says Sai, who has lived killing emotions for logic. "Nor for us, as Konoha shinobi. He also has known ties to missing-nins, as well as the criminal organization, Akatsuki."
"But Itachi-san isn't bad," Sakura says, lifting a pale hand from her knees to catch the last fading ray of sun. "He gave so much for the village. So that we could grow up without knowing war. And that boy, Sasuke-san, he just wants to help his brother."
The greatest problem of all, because every ninja faces the relativity of good and evil and most deal with it. But his students have been building their own dogma, their own way of understanding all the fighting that is their way of life. (And he's been helping. He gave them Obito's line.) Sasuke has grown up in blood and death, a child of fire. He lost everything in a tribute to the wars of the past, surviving only by clinging to his brother. And bonds are everything, aren't they?
I love my brother, he'd said again. And don't you know? It is when we are fighting for someone else that we can become truly strong.
Kakashi knows the truth of the words, and they resonate with his students. He just wishes the lesson didn't come from a red-eyed, grinning boy that would put a knife in all their backs given half a chance.
Madara left them at the entrance to the half-hidden cave of rock. By way of a goodbye, he crouched down to Sasuke's height and cheerfully informed them that if either says a word about his existence to anyone, he would murder both. Then he stepped back, whirling into the twisted trees, the forest's starless night.
Stay quiet, stay behind me, Itachi instructed, and they were words that the younger boy would come to live by. He would live for the day when he could protect that back.
Into the cave they went, through darkness and shadowy spikes, until the passage suddenly became a chamber. Two stood already in the dull red circle of torchlight, wearing the red-and-black cloaks that they would make so famous. The little boy might almost have been surprised by the blue of the woman's hair, if it hadn't found an echo on the man's skin. Sasuke looked up at his eyes and almost shivered, because really, was the man half shark? But he still had his sharingan, and they activated at that terrible moment when he believed his brother's betrayal, when he was willing to face someone who had just committed a hundred murders, someone he had revered as a god.
(People, Itachi will later say to him, after a conversation with Kisame, are far scarier than sharks. Sharks make no pretense of wanting to kill you.)
The woman arched an eyebrow at the pair, but she knew who had brought them here. He would play his games, she knew. But she was in service to a dream, and a very important person. She would follow orders.
(Not that she won't question. Not that she won't think. And one day, there will be a sea of paper—a tribute to her choice.)
The shark man knew nothing of these subtle currents, living as he did by the sword and brute force. "So this kid is to be my partner, huh?" And he looked down at Itachi, who had not quite hit his full height yet and would never, ever have Kisame's bulk. "But nobody said anything about another little brat!"
"A souvenir," Itachi said lightly, stepping forward into the light of flames. "I thought he might be a useful thing to have around." Not just a child, no. Kisame looked deeper into Itachi's shadow, and saw the red eyes in a pale face.
(Sasuke was getting tired now, those eyes taking their toll. But not yet, he said, not yet. Later, he can collapse.)
He didn't listen to his brother's words, didn't hear the implication that he was but a tool. He had destroyed his world for his brother's sake. He must trust him.
"Oh?' Kisame said, and he placed a gentle hand on the hilt of a great sword. "And you don't think anything will happen to him, mixing with us scary ninjas?" He looked down at the child hiding in shadows—his brother's shadow, which he knew so well.
Itachi's eyes didn't even shift into the mangekyou. But the shark man still staggered, slamming a hand against the wall of the cave. Long lashed-lids closed over red sharingan. "I am quite sure that won't be a problem." A deadly grace.
There was that moment of tension where charkras were flaring and they might have been people but they were playing by animal rules of strength. (The blue-haired woman just looked impassive and maybe a little annoyed, but she was expecting monsters.)
And then the shark man straightened and grinned. "So you say, Itachi-san. Pleased to be working with you."
(The former mist ninja had plenty of experience working with ninja children. He was only surprised to learn that Sasuke had not yet made his first kill. They went about fixing that.)
((and no one ever knew it, but sometimes Itachi was afraid))
"The same, Kisame-san," Itachi said, giving a polite nod. And that was that.
The woman, Konan, introduced herself as the partner to the Akatsuki leader, and presented Itachi with his very own cloud covered cloak. You might as well put a scratch in your forehead protector, she instructed. By this time tomorrow, everyone important will know you for a missing-nin anyway. (Sasuke would do that for Itachi. He would receive clothes of his own later, a gift from Madara. The back of the shirt would be marked with a single red cloud.)
Then what Sasuke thought was a plant but suddenly turned into a person-thing (earning a jump from Sasuke—his one display of weakness) introduced itself and explained how they would receive their orders. They received their first assignment—tracking down other potential members. Itachi put on his cloak, and life with Akatsuki began.
(Only, things weren't near so simple as that, of course, and there was some trouble with first a snake man, from whom Itachi took a hand, and then a man with blond hair, whose grudge against Itachi apparently extended to weaker targets. Really, Itachi, I must apologize, Sasori said to them one day. I don't know why my partners keep trying to kill your little brother.)
((And Itachi would watch, as his brother grew up.))
Keeping watch, Kakashi calls it. He can't very well get in a sharingan fight, and then be expected to keep up a bunshin for all of eternity. Naruto's just glad for the opportunity to speak to the boy again, because he has a slight tendency to never leave well enough alone.
(He does not give up.)
"Hey," he says softly to the other boy. "Are you awake?"
"No." The reply like a kunai throw. "Sleeping tied to a chair is just so comfortable."
And there's the little twitch of an eyebrow above a blue eye; the fingers, curling into a fist at the side. (the great gusts, the gathering of the wind before the storm) "You tick me off, you know that?" he says in a rising voice. He knows nothing of the shadows and frozen faces that the other lives in. The ninja world, supposedly.
"I'm your enemy. Idiot."
Only he is and he isn't. "I don't get you at all," Naruto says, agitation blowing off enough so that he sits down on the bed, sharp eyes just barely catching the other boy in the dark. His skin stands out and his hair blends in; how black and white the other is. "You seem to hate the village so much, but Akatsuki can't be any better!" (Very dangerous criminals doing dangerous criminal things, their teacher told them, and that seemed to be the limit of intelligence so far) "I mean, it's thanks to the village that I got to meet Iruka-sensei, and Sakura-chan, and Kakashi-sensei, and even that jerkface Sai!"
(And Naruto's miracle is not that he understands others, no. It is that others understand him. Shouldn't Sasuke understand?)
"Hmph. At least Akatsuki isn't full of hypocrites." A sneer makes its way onto that face. Mockery twines around his words like snakes. Tighter all the time. "Ordering someone to kill their own family in the first place is just fundamentally wrong, and a whole lot of people had to fuck up pretty badly for it to be necessary. But then to go and talk about goodness and love and that will of fire your village is famous for? That's just too much. Hilarious. Your village has a history as inhuman and vicious as any other."
The boy in the blindfold is speaking now to watch the blood run. He's let his weapons go, given them the story, made the cuts (so they bleed like he has). Cruelty fuels his words—or maybe it's pain? Except, he doesn't see he can't cut the wind, doesn't see that the breeze he thought was dying is becoming a gale, breaking free, and under the weight of it all, rising up.
(And really, this child is everything a shinobi is not.)
"Then I'll change it!" Naruto shouts, and he's on his feet again, watching as the clouds part and the moonlight touches the head and shoulders of the other boy.
"Change what?" he asks. So used to ice and stone.
"Everything!" And Naruto reaches a hand out, even if the other doesn't see. "I'll change the village, make it so that nothing like the Uchiha massacre ever happens again. I'll become Hokage, and make Konoha into a village that lives up to the will of fire. And while I'm at it, I'll destroy Akatsuki, and make you and your brother come home!"
Not the destined child, not the son of the Hokage, not the container of the Kyuubi. Just a loudmouthed little kid, making ridiculous statements to a hostage in an out of the way hotel in the middle of the night.
(And who would have thought?)
"You're insane," says Sasuke flatly.
"Just you wait, teme," says Naruto, voice light, and there's a smile on his face. "You'll be regretting those words when I'm Hokage!"
"You understand ideals are nothing in the shinobi world, don't you? If you think like that, the next time I see you, you'll either be dead or wishing you were." (Because there's always a price. Itachi wanted peace, and paid for it in blood. He wanted his little brother, and he only had to destroy the person who the boy was.)
There's so much to fear, so much uncertainty. The battlefield of the future, every choice a shuriken that will find blood somewhere. And Naruto understands fundamentally that guts can be spilled as easily as they can lead to victory.
Only he's still the golden boy, the wind-child, facing down the raven in the moon. His gaze is level.
"I will change things," he says. "It's a promise."
The moonlight eventually falls on another shape, sitting in the window. Black, and red. (Jiraya will explain later—genjutsu, of course, and everyone will accept that Naruto falls prey to it too. Who would understand that he has a promise to go keep?)
"It's time to go, Sasuke," Itachi says evenly. And just like that, the boy stands up, and the ropes fall to the floor. The blindfold follows, and in the blue-white light, there are red eyes.
"We'll meet again," Sasuke says to Naruto.
And they do.