Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto. I am not making any money off this. This is simply my take on the large blanks Kishimoto-san left for us in the Uchiha's history.

Warnings: This story spans from war to massacre to abuse of various forms. Topics in this may be unpleasant for the reader so reader discretion is advised.

Spoilers: This contains spoilers for Kakashi Gaiden. All other information referenced in the story should only involve episodes that have been shown on Cartoon network and Chapters that have been published in volume format in English.

I don't have a Beta right now. If this changes, this note will change

Notes: This was completed for National Novel Writing Month and is complete, it will be posted chapter by chapter as they receive their final edit.

The Uchiha Massacre

- Conclusion -

Kakashi walked though the Uchiha compound. His white ANBU armor covered in blood from moving so many bodies. Everywhere the ANBU looked, there were bodies. The entire area reeked of blood and decay. It had been three days since a young dark haired boy had run screaming from the compound. The child, Uchiha Sasuke, was unconscious in the hospital now. Kakashi was certain they were drugging the boy, the mental anguish of having come home to find this much have been over whelming. To find one's entire body killed in such a brutal manner was unthinkable. To know the atrocity had been committed by your own brother though … Kakashi did not think that there were words to describe that type of betrayal.

Between the physical evidence and the young Uchiha's recollection of the events, they knew what had happened that fateful night. They did not know why. What could have made Uchiha Itachi do this? Kakashi stopped on the porch of Uchiha Itachi's former residence. He had known the boy. He had let the boy sleep on his floor. Something was not right here. Kakashi shook his head as he huffed under his breath. Obviously, something was not right here. Over two hundred people had been killed in the space of a few hours.

Yes, Itachi was a troubled boy with something horrible going on in his life. This, however, did not make sense. Kakashi, Yuuhi-sensei, and Morino-sensei had not detected any thing like this in the boy. Kakashi felt he had failed Itachi, to not have discovered what was troubling the boy in time to prevent the destruction of the boy's entire clan. Kakashi walked amongst the death and destruction. Bodies of the old and the young were strewn everywhere, left to rot in the sun where they had fallen. It was slaughter, pure and simple. Kakashi traced the path of bodies. The first few kills showed a hesitation from the boy. As the body count grew though, the killing became mechanical and automatic, as if the boy had stopped caring that this was his clan he was killing without any thought to their lives.

The chakra depletion from using his Sharingan this much was exhausting, but his single eye from Obito was the last Sharingan that the village had. He had to do his best to discover everything about the crime scene that he could. He did not know how the boy could have killed everyone in only four hours. Four short hours from when the first bodies had fallen to when Sasuke ran screaming from the Uchiha district was such little time. For anyone it should have been impossible. Several of the fallen had been ANBU. Many had been high ranked Jônin. These were Uchiha, not normal civilians that were killed in such a short time.

Nearly half of the police for of Konoha had been slaughtered in those few hours. There was no way a Chuunin; even a chuunin of Itachi's abilities, should have been able to cause this type of destruction. Yes, there had been plans to promote him to Jônin, but still. It should have taken squads of ANBU to causes such destruction, not just one single thirteen-year-old boy.

Kakashi stood in the center of the Uchiha district, finally covering his Sharingan eye to stop the chakra drain. He had seen this type of ability from the boy before. That one fateful mission when he had been sure they would both die. He had not been able to divert much attention to his teammate. Even a fraction of a second distraction from his opponent at the time would have proven to be fatal. However, out of the corner of his eye, he had seen something unusual. Something that night had been different about the Uchiha's movements. They had been faster, more accurate. Something about those movements had been unusual, different from what he was used to seeing fro the Uchiha style.

It was months before intelligence was able to put together what happened with Kakashi's half remembered glimpses of that night. When they discovered that there was another form of the Sharingan eye and somehow that Itachi had obtained it, answers began to be pieced together. Before long Konoha learned that Uchiha Itachi was the latest recruit to the Akatsuki. This was extremely bad for Konoha, but nothing could be done now. Figuring out what had been wrong with the young Uchiha might have helped, but that time was long past. Now the only option left to Kakashi was to find his old pupil and take him out before he could cause any more harm to Konoha.

When Sasuke was released from the hospital, he was put in the custody of a nice family he did not know. Everyone seemed worried about him, but they did not under stand what had happened. They did not know how Itachi had shown him the entire destruction of his clan in such vivid detail. They did not understand that he had seen the destruction of his clan over and over, the nightmares that he had been forced to relive. The vivid dreams of destruction and death and feeling how it felt as the blood dripped arms. The feeling of the blood and the blade. The catch of the blade as it snagged on bone before plunging deep into soft flesh. He saw death take his mother over and over as it was replayed in his dreams lit by the black moon of his brother's illusion. He woke up screaming every night, his mouth locked open in silent terror.

Sasuke slipped out of bed and snuck through the village. He slipped through narrow alleyways between buildings. The Uchiha compound appeared before him and he slipped tough the gates. It lie abandoned. The compound felt like a tomb instead of the home it had once been. He walked past the store his aunt and uncle used to run. He walked past the houses of cousins and aunts and uncles and relatives that he did not even know how they were related. Every house was silent. This was a tomb now, a place where the living did not belong. This was a tomb, the final resting place of the clan. This was a land of the dead, the land of the Uchiha. All the Uchiha were dead.

As the realization struck Sasuke, he collapsed to his knees. The tears he had not let fall streaming from his face. He collapsed in the middle of the street, no one there to see him as he cried for his family, cried for his clan and cried for the destruction brought about by his brother. The brother that he had looked up to, the brother whom he had idolized that he had yearned for the approval of.

Itachi peered out at his little brother, watching the tears flow from the young boy's eyes. He only had a few hours, if even that. He did not know how long he could avoid detection by Konoha's ANBU squads. He saw his brother stand up, the look of determination on the young boy's face confirmed that Itachi had made the right decision. The boy was young but he was strong. He would pick up the pieces of what had been called the Uchiha clan and he would be able to rebuild it.

Itachi turned and raced off across the rooftop. The future of the Uchiha clan was secure. Sasuke would be strong enough to rebuild the clan. He would be able to bring about what the Uchiha clan should be. Itachi would push his brother; make sure that the youngest was strong. He would remain alive and give his little brother a target for the hatred and the pain that loosing his family had brought about. Sacrificing everything for his brother had been a gamble, but as Itachi returned to the hell known as Akatsuki, it was worth it. The clan would be rebuilt. Sasuke would rebuild the clan from the blank slate that Itachi had washed clean with the family's blood.

THE END