Tenten didn't act immediately on her surprise. She gaped at the sniffling girl for a few moments, taking in the sudden appearance of blood red eyes with three tomoe slowly spinning in each iris.
Uchiha. No, that couldn't be right. That wasn't possible, unless Sasuke...? But Sasuke wouldn't have.
But that wasn't what mattered right now.
When she finally collected herself, she helped Sachiko to her feet and led her to the entrance of her shop. She flipped the sign so the closed side faced the streets and steered the teen to the back where there was a small table, a fridge, a microwave, and a TV hanging in the corner.
"Tea?" Tenten questioned softly.
Sachiko nodded and shrugged off her pack, stiffening only when Tenten eased herself at the table beside her and placed two cups down with a soft clink against the wood. The woman patted her shoulder reassuringly before her expression took on a more serious note.
"Now I won't press you on anything you don't want to talk about, but... sorry, Sachiko-san, could you tell me what's going on? The only conclusion I can come up with is that Sasuke's your father and you're definitely older than his kid, and who knows what he was up to in the war."
Sachiko fiddled with her fingers. From her mother's letters, she knew that Sasuke would of course have a family because he wanted to revive his clan- but there was a time in her mother's life where she was in love with him. A small part of her thought that maybe he had some heart in him to love Sakura back and take some remorse for himself after killing her. But no, he was happy and content with a family of his own and she had no right to judge him for what he did with his life.
The only right she had was to be sure her mother's name wasn't remembered in vain.
She looked up at the kind, sincere face of a person who wanted to understand.
Tenten... I don't know what to say to her. If you ever get the chance, tell her I wish I was there for her.
"I was born during the war. Two years before it ended and grew up in a small town on Fire Country's border," Sachiko murmured. "I never met my parents, but all I've been hearing since finding out who my kaa-san was, everyone keeps telling me she's a war hero. She died twelve years ago and now, her name's on the memorial in the cemetery."
Tenten leaned forward and peered into the depths of those sad, sad red eyes. She took the time to imagine them when they were green again and thought to why they looked so familiar, or why those eyes made her feel like- in a less literal sense- one of the dead had been brought back to life.
Eyes like—
"Sakura... was your kaa-san's name, wasn't it?" she whispered. A timid nod was her reply, and she sat back while releasing a heavy breath.
"Holy—then Sasuke really is-"
"No," the girl interrupted quietly. If it were possible, she looked even more miserable and disheartened as what she said next tumbled from her lips as smoothly as steel being driven against bone. "Kaa-san was tortured for twelve hours and I was born later that year." The tomoe of her sharingan spun just a tad faster. "Her torturer's name was Uchiha Obito. All I know of him is that he was Hatake-san's teammate, he started the war, and I'm his daughter."
Tenten didn't know what to say. A part of her started to mourn once again as she slowly digested what her comrade- friend- had to suffer through. The other part of her wanted to collect this poor girl in her arms and tell her how sorry she was that a monster was her father and that she never got the chance to meet the strong, passionate kunoichi that was Haruno Sakura.
Before she could, though, the sound of a default ringtone fluttered about the room. Sachiko looked apologetic, but Tenten waved it off and let her answer.
"H-Hello?"
/Sachiko. I paid a visit to the Hokage and told him about your situation minus some of the major details and said I'd bring you to meet him sometime soon, but when I mentioned your name and what you looked like, he told me to bring you to his office right away. Did something happen?/
Her cheeks darkened. "I'm sorry, I di-didn't mean, I... I yelled at him earlier. I'm sorry."
/You...? Okay, never mind. We can discuss that later. Where are you now?/
She spared a glance at the Weapon's Mistress. "I'm with Tenten-san at her shop."
/Great, I'll-/
"And she, uh, knows. About me."
There was a beat of silence.
/Ah. Well, it should be fine if she accompanies you to the Tower, then?/
Tenten, having heard the whole conversation, answered smoothly. "I'll bring her there no worries, senpai."
/Good. I'll see you both soon./
When she lowered the phone and let the screen fade to black, she caught the reflection of herself in the smudged screen.
Whose eyes were those?!
Sachiko pocketed her device as Tenten got up to lead her to the Tower.
"You can leave your bag here and pick it up after the meeting and I'll be sure to lock up so all your things are safe. Let's head out and see the Nanadaime- he won't get mad at you for yelling at him, I promise. He's got a good heart."
A good heart.
Like the heart that was mangled out of her mother's chest because he and Sasuke were stupid enough to try and kill each other when so many people believed in them?
Sachiko pressed her lips together and ducked her head as she walked down the street at Tenten's side, keeping her eyes out of sight. Where did that come from? Where was she getting all this morbidity?!
The Tower was a huge mute-red building that stood in front of the grand Hokage Monument of seven faces, behind it on a steeper ledge being dozens of new structures and skyscrapers that were in the middle of construction. Konoha truly was beautiful, and it made her wonder about it sometimes- about how different her life would've been if she grew up here.
She would've trained to be a shinobi, perhaps. To grow stronger and protect people who couldn't do it for themselves. To protect people like her mother.
All too soon they entered the building where they climbed a few flights of stairs and saw Kakashi out in the hallway, leaning against a wall and reading a purple book in his hands.
"Senpai!" Tenten called. He turned to regard them with a content eye crinkle, but ended up freezing at the sight of Sachiko. He was crouched down in front of her in an instant and stared straight into her eyes, making her flinch at the sudden and unexpected movement.
"When did you activate it?" he asked. His voice was low and serious and she gulped.
"It's... It's the sharingan, right?" she mumbled. He nodded and she averted her gaze. "I-I don't know, I yelled at Nanadaime-sama, then I ran, then Tenten-san found me, so I don't..."
Kakashi ran a hand through his hair. Even if the girl was an Uchiha, she was undoubtedly a civilian who had no prior shinobi training before meeting him and Yamato at the inn. She wasn't supposed to have the ability to unlock her sharingan, especially one with all three tomoe intact and spinning. He glanced down at her.
Kami, if Naruto wasn't going to like this one bit, where did that leave Sasuke?
"Do you know how to turn it off?"
Sachiko shook her head. He sighed. No, of course not. She didn't even know about her kekkai genkai until she read Sakura's letter.
"Then I think you should brace yourself for the explanation that's about to come. Tenten, would you mind coming in to mediate if you could?"
She laid a hand on the girl's shoulders and smiled. "Not a problem."
So the three of them entered the office together, Kakashi first, Sachiko next, and Tenten trailing behind as she lightly steered the teeth through the door.
The first thing Sachiko noticed was not the Hokage anxiously waiting by his desk, but the other person who occupied the space. The man, dressed in a light purple vest and a gray long sleeved shirt, had his back towards her with his stark black hair brushing against his collar. The aura he exuded wasn't as kind as Tenten's or as aloof as Kakashi's, but was dampened with something heavy that warned her he wasn't someone to cross.
He didn't have to turn around for her to realize, frighteningly, that this was the other teammate the letters had told her stories of.
The other half of the coin. The darker side of Team Seven's light.
Her mother's second murderer.
::
Naruto came to attention when his door opened and three people swept into the room. Kakashi, his old mentor, the strange girl who yelled at him, and Tenten, a loyal friend.
He wasn't going to lie to himself. Hearing those words through screams and tears at the Memorial not only sent him careening into a type of hurt that he didn't think could happen to him again, but made him question everything he knew about Sakura. A daughter? When? How? Why? It couldn't possibly be true, but...
... but her outburst had so much pain behind it that he found it hard not to believe her.
When he opened his mouth to confront her, he locked eyes with the girl. "You—"
He stopped, eyes rounding considerably before he flashed Kakashi a hard look.
"What the hell is going on here?!"
Sasuke's eyebrows furrowed at the sight of his Kage as he too turned to face the newcomers. Two people he recognized and one he didn't. And the little girl that stood there had eyes of two glistening rubies each dotted with three tomoe the color of the darkest ash.
He reacted on impulse.
Before anyone could stop what was about to happen, Sasuke had grabbed the girl by the front of her shirt and hoisted her up so that her toes barely skimmed the ground. She cried out as his black eyes twisted into what she remembered reading as the eternal sharingan.
I know there was a time when Sasuke loved his brother. But that time was long gone and what Itachi did to their family wrenched him apart and made him a person who longed for revenge and would do anything just to meet his goal no matter how many people he had to kill along the way. And yes, there were times that he tried to kill me too for getting in the way, for being weak, for being too much of a burden.
People like him... I don't think you should get too close. Naruto loved him. I loved him. But he was poisonous.
Even now with what I'm going to do, it makes me wonder.
Is he really worth it?
"Why do you have those eyes?!" he demanded. True terror sprinted across her face as she stared into the dark depths of red and black. She could hear the shouts of 'Stop!' and 'Let her go!' and 'Sasuke!' in the background, but she could barely hear them over the sound of her own heart beating wildly in her ears.
Heart.
Sharingan.
Uchiha.
Her mother's second murderer.
All of a sudden, she snapped.
"So what are you going to do?" she hissed. She had done it so quietly and resentfully that it brought about a spell of chilling surprise from the witnesses. "Strangle me? Stab me? Or are you going to kill me the same way you killed Haruno Sakura- by ripping my heart out of my chest?"
Sasuke dropped her like his hand was scorched.
Tenten was at Sachiko's side in a second, checking to see if she was hurt and throwing up glares at the Uchiha who backed up until he returned to his spot at the opposite end of the room.
Naruto bit his lip, took a deep breath, and placed his attention on Kakashi once more. "Is she really Sakura-chan's daughter?"
Sasuke's neck twisted to the right so quickly that an audible crack echoed in the room. Kakashi stood at Sachiko's other side protectively, half-expecting his old student to be at her neck again.
"Yes."
Naruto sucked in another breath. "How sure are you?"
"Sachiko approached Tenzou and I at the inn we stayed at before coming here. She had a box full of things we never recovered. Pictures of Sakura's friends and family, the first Team Seven photo, her hitai-ate," he replied. "She had blood work done earlier. The machines matched her DNA 99% with Sakura's."
"And... And the sharingan?"
Kakashi and Tenten exchanged solemn glances before he answered truthfully; morosely. "Uchiha Obito."
Naruto's face appeared so naive and innocent. He was so... confused when that name was said that it took about ten seconds, ten long, painful, seconds for him to realize the bitter undertone in which it was said. Next, his face morphed into one of disbelief. No, that would never happen to Sakura. That couldn't. Fate could never be so cruel to someone he loved so much. And finally, there was anger. Simmering under his skin that brought his blood to a boil.
"That bastard..."
Sakura-chan. Their Sakura-chan. All these years and they never had a damn clue.
The girl's cries came back to him in one fell swoop that had him holding onto his desk for support.
"Do you still think she did what she did because she loved you?!"
And it wasn't just a letter she'd left for her daughter. It was a suicide letter. Suicide. Oh god. A humorless laugh trickled past clenched teeth.
"Uchiha Sachiko, huh?"
Sachiko stared at him, a renewed vigor flooding her veins. "No."
"No...?"
Her sharingan receded back into its emerald green, but that only seemed to make the ache in Naruto's chest grow stronger. "Because my name is Haruno Sachiko and I won't be known as anything other than that."
The back of Naruto's eyes burned with the threat of tears.
All the while, Sasuke didn't spare a look at her. Her words struck a chord so close to home that his mind stopped functioning when she mentioned that name. Then when Kakashi revealed just exactly who she was and implied the torment that had befallen her, he remembered the blood that colored his hands and the years he spent trying to wash it off.
No, he wouldn't look at her.
Couldn't.
But Sasuke willed himself to for one moment and caught sight of how green her true eyes were.
That feeling came back to him. Her blood on his hands, pooling around his knees, so much that it stained his skin and clothes and dear Kami how can a body have so much blood no stop she can't die she can't die she can't no no no what have you done—
He cast his stare down at his hands, seeing the red heart he tore away from her.
'I'm sorry, Sakura.'
Sasuke raised his eyes again and saw Sachiko's face—somber and angry with eyes as bright as what her mother's used to be.
'But I know now that won't ever be enough.'
::
To be continued in Omake VI: Truth
::
EDITED 2.11.18
