The Konoha orphanage was a place he had only seen once. Kaa-chan had been holding his hand, walking him a different way to somewhere he couldn't remember around some sort of construction. He couldn't remember much from that day, but he did remember the two handsome men speaking to an old lady and holding hands, one each, with a young boy who was looking at them like they were stars fallen from the heavens.
"Kaa-chan?" he'd asked, "what's tha'?"
Kaa-chan had looked and smiled briefly before looking down to him with a smile. "Those two men are in love, Sasuke, just like Kaa-chan and Tou-chan are in love. But since two men can't have babies like a man and a woman can, they go to the orphanage to get a baby instead."
Younger Sasuke had been amazingly jealous. He didn't like girls at all, but boys were pretty cute. Also they got to get babies from an orphanage instead of from one of their bellies. He wished he didn't have to marry a girl so that he could get an orphanage baby instead.
Now, Sasuke had realized that having a baby like his parents was no longer an option for him, not if he wanted to end the Uchiha line. He really wanted kids though, which meant he'd need to adopt someday. And to do that he'd need a husband.
'Well,' thought Sasuke, 'I guess I'll just have to be gay, now. Now that I think about it, it will be nice to like boys instead of girls. Girls are pretty annoying anyways, and boys are really very cute. I wonder why everybody doesn't choose to be gay, it seems way better than forcing yourself to like the opposite gender.'
Sasuke slammed down into the chair before the clerk's desk. Said clerk jerked violently and glared at Sasuke before a moment of shock passed through her eyes and she quickly began to smile instead.
"Uchiha-san! What can I do for you today?" she chirped.
Sasuke crossed his arms and leaned back so that his bangs would fall over his eyes. "Need to change my will."
The desk clerk's eyebrows went up. "Your Last Will and Testament? But the Uchiha- oh. Oh, yes, I see." The clerk began rummaging through a series of drawers, each one causing her to glance up at Sasuke with a grimace and rummage faster. Finally she slapped a thick folder onto the table along with a pen. "So, as I'm sure you know your brother, as a missing-nin, does not qualify as a beneficiary in any sense under Konoha law, and that includes the Clan manifesto. Normally you wouldn't be able to make any alterations to this but, well, um…" The clerk twiddled the pen and shifted her eyes rapidly away from Sasuke's unchanged expression. "So what did you have in mind, Uchiha-san?"
Sasuke leaned forward and uncrossed his arms, putting his hands on the edge of the clerk's desk. "Funerary conditions." With that, he pulled out a slip of paper and slid it across the desk to her. She quickly unfolded it.
"Coordinates?" she asked.
"Hn," Sasuke replied, "where I'm to be buried."
The clerk nodded. "Ah! I see. A final resting plate for your ashes."
"No," Sasuke snarled, "for my body. No cremation will occur." The clerk paled.
"U-uchiha-san, Konoha-nin with doujutsu are prohibited from-"
"I don't have my doujutsu. Once I have it, then you can cremate me." Sasuke glared at the clerk who was now leaning away from her own desk with trembling shoulders.
"I-I suppose that's technically allowed, but surely-"
"These are Clan matters. Shall I take this to the Hokage?" Sasuke raised an eyebrow.
"Right!" she scrambled to make the note within the folder. "Was there anything else I could do for you, Uchiha-sama?" Sasuke smirked a little and leaned back.
"I'm leaving everything to the Konoha orphanage. Even the land and houses."
The clerk could not manage even a thin veneer over her hilariously gaping maw. Her eyes were bugging out so far Sasuke half suspected she had the doujutsu rather than him. The woman mutely nodded and bent over to make another note. As soon as her pen left the paper Sasuke snatched up the whole thing and looked over her alterations. They looked…fine? Sasuke wasn't exactly trained in this sort of thing but they looked official and were worded right, if worded fancy. He nodded with a blank expression and let no doubt show as he handed back the folder. The clerk beamed and her shoulders relaxed.
"I'm so glad to have been of ser-" Sasuke stood up from his seat, which screeched against the wood, and marched out the door without a backwards glance. He really did hate bureaucracy.
It was time.
Three years after that day. Less than a year until Graduation. And he was actually ready. He could finally move towards his goal.
Sasuke ran through the compound after he'd finally finished at the academy for the day. This was nothing new. He spent every possible moment at home, working and training and working some more. Today, though, he ran with a bit more excitement, a bit more hope. Every step was bringing him closer to his goal, and Sasuke was no slouch when it came to taking steps. He threw himself around each corner, sometimes skidding in the dust before he'd right himself and launch himself forward again.
The Uchiha compound had changed so much in the past three years. The houses he'd left open were all rotting, filled with growing shrubbery and claimed by various squirrels. It wasn't much, but it brought sound and life to the compound. Every leaf that settled on the old floorboards and slowly faded into dirt was like a little more dirt to cover his clan's graves.
He'd gone through and grabbed things from various houses over the years. Warm blankets, clocks, books and paintings. He used his parents old bedroom for most of it, except for a select few books and his very, very large collection of batteries.
Hope felt like static electricity at Sasuke's fingertips. It felt like potential, like joy and danger all at once. It felt like the little shrine that Sasuke worshiped. That's why he collected so many batteries. Every time we went to pay his respects, or nap, or…cry, he'd check on the glow of the red electric lantern and replace the battery if it so much as dimmed. The tree had grown over the years, with branches vast enough to protect the flimsy lantern from the worst of various storms.
Sasuke reached his home and yanked open the front door to hurry inside. Years ago, he would have hated being so disrespectful of the place his parents had died. The house for that first few weeks had been more of a mausoleum than a home. Then, Sasuke had gone ahead and ripped out the walls on the ground floor. He left the support beams, he just got rid of the wall bits. After that something had clicked in his head and his childhood home had very much become his own vision.
As usual, Sasuke walked into his home and yelled out into the mess. "I'm home!" he called. Pazu immediately ran out from her favorite nook next to the sunny window and came up to him, meowing and purring as she rubbed herself over his legs. Sasuke smiled and knelt down to greet her properly. He stuck his face in front of hers and let her rub their cheeks together while scritching her all up and down her spine. Her little purrs hitched with chirrups. As soon as he stood up she ran off, ready to do whatever it is cats do. Sasuke had never once managed to 'tail' her (ha!) during her afternoon business.
He ditched his school bag next to the front door, but left his outside shoes on. He didn't take them off unless he was in his bedroom, not with all of the junk accumulated on the ground floor that could stab his feet.
His workshop was his favorite place in the world. It looked nothing like the normal family home it had used to be. In large part, that was because Sasuke had filled the now wall-less space with scrap metal and rocks. He collected metals in all forms. It was hard, since so many of the rocks and metals were very impure, but he tried to keep things vaguely separated by ferromagnetic, ferri-magnetic, paramagnetic, diamagnetic, and anti-ferromagnetic. Then there was the forge.
He'd originally made it himself out of stuff he'd dug out around the Uchiha compound, then once he'd completed it he'd realized that having an indoor forge where he lived was a very bad idea. He'd realized this when he lit it for the first time and got smoked out of his own house. So he'd opened up the wall next to it and sort of cordoned it off. It meant his workshop was a bit more exposed to the elements than he'd like over there, but he'd gotten good enough at building that the rest of the ground floor was still fairly indoors while the forge was fairly outdoors. It was an invaluable tool for him. Being able to melt down metals and mess with them had taught him more about electricity than anything else. It was an ugly little thing, brown and squat and misshaped on one side, but it worked perfectly. There was even a little metal hook that he'd made on the wall next to it where he hung his face-shield and heavy mittens.
His regular indoor-goggles and gloves were more nomadic. They usually ended up on the last counter he worked at before bed time, but sometimes they got hung from things, shoved to the floor, tossed into piles, or flat out worn to bed. Once he'd spent an entire weekend looking for them and using his spare set only to find he'd been using them as a headband.
Sasuke heaved a sigh of relief and slumped over towards his desk, the cozy, fluffy-pillow lined nest where he could sit and read and write and plan. It was so warm he probably slept there more often than he slept upstairs. He'd found a few kotatsus in the neighboring houses and torn them apart to create a sort of oven of kotatsus lined with every fleece fabric he could find. Such luxury was unbefitting of an Uchiha going into Shinobi work, especially one from the main house. So of course, Sasuke devoted himself to enjoying it. In his worse moments he wondered if Itachi would have become so rotten inside if he'd just gotten some nice pillows and a heated table. Then he'd try very hard not to cry by going and melting something and then electrifying it. Or vice versa. Many of Sasuke's days ended up going similarly. Think something horrible, cry, then work himself into exhaustion so that he could sleep. A recipe for success, given his status as top of his class.
Gingerly, Sasuke stepped over a weird spiky thing he must have made during one of his late-night magnetic field experiments. Magnets were terrifyingly unpredictable but also so predictable it was beautiful. And then you added in electromagnetism and everything went weird. Thus the naturally spiky metal ball. Leaning against a support beam was some silver metal he'd taken from a house a few blocks away. It was in the form of a mirror, currently. He couldn't avoid his own reflection as he climbed up the step to the kitchen where his nest was built.
He looked…fine. His eyes were flinty and glaring, his hair was spiky and black, his skin was clean-ish and pale. He looked like any other Uchiha. Every day he wore a black sleeveless top with a high neck and the Uchiha fan on the back. Everything he owned had the fan on it. Still, they were Shinobi grade so it was fine. His black pants with lots of pockets were also fine. What he really liked was the black civilian hoodie he'd bought two years ago. It was so soft and big, it was like wearing a blanket everywhere. In class he could put up his hood and avoid eye contact with almost all of the mean girls who yelled at him and made fun of him all the time. He wasn't sure why they blinked at him so much and brought him food and laughed at him until they turned red, but he figured they just thought he was a bit of a nerd. Which was true. They were always talking about how Sasuke was at the top of the class and how pretty he looked and how good he was at fighting. The blonde and pink ones wouldn't even let anyone sit by him or talk to him, they were so disgusted by him. Still, he wasn't going to the academy to make friends. The girls were annoying at worst, and hopefully soon they'd grow out of picking on him.
Sasuke turned away from the mirror and sighed. He clenched his fists and tried to ignore all of the petty worries and quirks flickering through the front of his mind. He couldn't get sucked into his comfy little nest or his comfy hoodie or his comfy life at the academy or even his comfy workshop with Pazu. Instead, he grabbed his experiment notes and walked to the metal chair in the only clean space in his workshop.
The chair was the center of his procedure, but ultimately irrelevant. He would sit there, but the real magic was behind the chair along the edge of the wall. He ran a finger along the armrest before kneeling down to check the lever. The trigger lever was connected to five wires, four hanging loose and one crawling along the floor. He checked the floor wire's connection to the lever, then followed it to the wall, to the set of batteries he'd built himself. Each one was nearly as big as he was, and would not conduct electricity to the four hanging wires until the lever was thrown.
See, Sasuke had been reading about chakra pathways three years ago, searching for a way to get rid of his doujutsu. Chakra had a lot in common with electricity. And the pathways, they were a lot like wires. Yet, the book had warned, Shinobi attempting lightning jutsu should be careful not to convert their own chakra into lightning chakra until it was at the fingertips, or else risk burning out the chakra pathways altogether.
So Sasuke had done some calculations. Shinobi who had died due to overloading with lightning chakra had all done so with the exact same voltage, although he'd apparently been the first one to calculate that. So, he'd wondered, would a lesser voltage injected into opened chakra points burn out the pathways without burning out the whole Shinobi? Like, say, just the pathways that fueled a doujutsu?
He couldn't be sure, not until he'd tried it, but every experiment so far indicated 'yes'. Probably.
So, while he was at it, he'd decided to take care of two birds with one stone. Or rather, four birds. Two eyes, and two…sensitive areas. He didn't want the eyes, but he also didn't want any children with the eyes. So he'd just have to make sure he couldn't have children. Iruka-sensei had explained about how sometimes Shinobi can have babies on missions without wanting to, with enemy shinobi especially. He'd said it happened more often to captured kunoichi but Sasuke wanted to be prepared for anything.
The batteries all looked fine, and Sasuke was as ready as he was going to get. It was a sobering thought. There was no time to be scared or doubtful, not when he had a promise to keep. His eyes could come in at any moment, and if they did then all of his planning would be useless. He shook slightly, but took off his shoes and shirt anyways. His pants followed, and then his underwear. Nudity was never something he'd get used to, but any fabric could easily get in the way of the wires and ruin his procedure.
Sasuke sat down in the procedure chair and tried desperately not to shiver. Between the cold and his fear, his body was not obeying. Just like always his traitorous body kept trying to cling on to control, but after today the two biggest dangers of his flesh would be gone. Forever.
Sasuke grabbed the set of four wires, two labeled with red, two with blue. He, using only his fingernails, peeled away a bit of his nearby electrical tape from the roll to use to attach one blue wire to his left testicle. Every hair on his body stood up, and he twitched violently. Even the tape, holding a bit of metal to such a sensitive spot, was painful. Still, what was next would be so, so much worse. He quickly got the second blue wire attached to the other testicle and tried to ignore the pinching. The red wires, he took a moment to stare at as he clenched them in one shaking hand. He'd not once questioned in the past three years what his parents would say if they knew what he was giving up. He grit his teeth and shifted his gaze to the roll of electrical tape. They were dead, so their opinions weren't his biggest priority anymore.
He remembered his brother and that night. He remembered that being as unlike Itachi as possible would be the best thing for everyone. Especially the dead.
Sasuke took one wire at a time and taped them ever so carefully at the inner corner of each eye. His eyes watered so badly he worried for a moment that the tape on each side of the bridge of his nose would fail. His eyelids fluttered against his control, desperately trying to protect the precious Uchiha eyes. Sasuke let them close. The wires were in place and, in defiance of all bodily defenses, they weren't moving.
Sasuke reached out and found the trigger lever with his fingertips. His breaths were coming in short little gasps that vibrated his entire chest. He grasped the trigger with a freezing cold hand and, before his body could wrest back power from his mind, he yanked it back.
The metal tabs out of his sight connected, which Sasuke knew in some dark corner of his mind only because of the pain they triggered which began to obliterate every other thought. The electricity was an all-consuming sensation, a burning, shattering flow centered in his abdomen and his face, but radiating throughout his entire body. On the other side of his eyelids the light was flickering, and all he could hear was a high-pitched scream augmented by a mechanical whine. From the strain on his throat, he was probably the one screaming. He felt like he was being split apart upon every crack in his skin. The electric storm went on for longer than Sasuke could ever have hoped to comprehend, and all Sasuke could think was 'please, please let it stop'.
The pain vanished as quickly as it had come. Behind him, he could hear slight bubbling and a metallic click he'd set to indicate safe completion of the experiment. Sasuke slumped in the chair, panting for breath.
It was several minutes before Sasuke could bring himself to open his eyes. He'd half feared he'd go blind after this stunt, and when he peeled his eyelids open everything was blurry which only fed into his worst-case-scenario terror. Sasuke blinked furiously and reached up with a trembling hand to yank away the red wires, hot tears rolling down his cheeks and allowing his vision to become mercifully clear. As he looked out across his workshop, Sasuke could only gasp.
The room was so colorful. The clarity hadn't changed, and the colors hadn't…changed, per se, but it was like everything was so much more vivid, like the world had been slightly greyed out before this moment. Pazu, sneaking around the corner with flattened ears and a bushy tail, was a blushingly warm orange. His nest was a riot of forget-me-not blues and greens that looked more alive than any tree Sasuke could remember. He suspected a real tree would be even better. This, more than anything else, gave Sasuke hope that his plan had worked.
Sasuke beamed and looked down to pull away the other wires. He snagged them and winced. His thighs were warm against the metal seat, and he could see now that he'd pissed himself. He knew electricity was almost guaranteed to do that, but he'd tried not to drink any water today. The wires he pulled away were a bit damp, and Sasuke stood up out of the puddle probably a bit faster than he should have.
He knew it was a bit too fast because as soon as he stepped away from the chair he blacked out entirely.
