Summary:
[Warning: Cockroaches, bastard children, war, rumours, whispers. You must continue. There is no other option now.]
Imagine, for a moment, that a half-blood Uchiha is thrown out onto Konoha's streets, (do not think that such a thing has a name). Imagine, for a moment, that there is a war and every able-person is pushed to help, (a child, thrown into the war, as cannon fodder and not expected to survive). Imagine, for a moment, that a child meant to die survives, (do not think about how easy it is to break, in a war). But such a thing, of course, could not happen. The history books will talk of a Konoha soldier who survived the impossible and fought, (they will not talk about the corpses of children left on the battleground). The history books will not record the rumours and whispers, (but they will be the most telling). Or, at least, that's what happens in Konoha.
An AU of an AU, wherein Toru Uchiha ends up born earlier and, for several reasons, experiences a life very different from the one we've already seen. This doesn't require any other books in the series to have been read, cockroaches are a lot less important than they sound, I promise.
There are whispers, rumours, of a bastard child belonging to Konoha, (it is not surprising that there is a child fighting for Konoha, because all the villages have children fighting for them; child soldiers thrown out to the front lines to win or to die and they will fulfil their role regardless). But these whispers and rumours are the kind that talk of something dangerous, of something so profoundly horrifying that even ninjas consider avoiding such things.
An Aburame-Uchiha, the rumours say. A child of the deadliest kind, the whispers say. Whilst there are similarities between the two, there is one thing both the rumours and whispers agree on: the child will never be where you think, and when you attack it will collapse and become millions of insects and they will swallow you without mercy and a child will stare you down, (and you will know then that you should never have gone for this easy target, this child of Konoha; perhaps you never should have gone to war at all).
There will be notes, in the future, in history books about this child of Konoha, about this bastard of two clans that never should have formed it. One clan that made the world shudder at their touch, that changed the world with the Senju Clan, that can copy what you do and see what you will do before it happens—just with their eyes. And the other clan—one that is quiet and watchful and strange, one that is dangerous and deadly and horrifying and chakra-stealers.
There will be notes about this child. They will say that it helped scare the villages into ceding to Konoha. They will say that it was deadly on the battlefield and existed in multiple places in one. These books will be impersonal and objective and will be propaganda. They will lie and say that the bastard child was something strange and horrifying and awful. They will say it was an Aburame-Uchiha. They will say a lot of things, not all of them will be true, (but enough—enough will be true because that bastard child was something very scary and very horrifying and very, very deadly).
The things the books do not say—they matter. Because the books do not want to show this bastard child in any positive light. And so they will not talk about how the child was a half-blood Uchiha with an unknown father (the Uchiha Clan will call him a child of war or an accident, but always bastard, always awful, and then they will call him genius, call him Uchiha, but he will remember being called bastard and coward and being tossed to the street when his mother died; they claim him now but they didn't until he proved he was worth something—but he shouldn't have had to).
They will not talk about how he made himself a name in Konoha from the streets, that he came from the gutters but seemed noble, (he didn't look Uchiha as a young child and so no one knew otherwise and so no one thought he mattered and so he gathered the children around him and told them that they all mattered with blood stained teeth and bruised knuckles; and he moved through the years quickly because there was no hiding when you lived on the streets and those kids depended on him just as he depended on them).
They will not talk about how he took as many kids off of the streets as he could and found them places to live and survive and work, (the Uchiha clan might have claimed him as an Uchiha but he refused to return to them when they scorned his uprising and those he housed).
They will not talk about the way he offered mercy the moment he could, (the other villages do not wish to admit how many should have died from this bastard child, they will not admit to prisoners of war returning home and claiming that the bastard child had stuck his neck out for them).
And there are, of course, things that no one will ever know. There will be shadows that the bastard child doesn't let leave his soul, the scars he will refuse to rip open, (because he is a genius and he could be much, much more deadly—he gave enough to be proven as a genius, enough that Konoha would not demand more, but he could not give everything, not to these deaths, not to the war; he would not sacrifice the rest of his heart and bring death in the hundreds just because Konoha should be the place he called home).
And when the war ends people will wonder about the bastard child, about the Aburame-Uchiha who lived and killed and always, always survived. They will wonder. And it won't just be his enemies but also those he somehow managed to save during that awful war. They will wonder if Konoha executed him for what he did. They will wonder if he was sent on a mission and died on it. They will wonder if he retired.
Here is what Konoha will never admit to: they never saw the deadly cockroach resting in the corner, they never spotted the danger of what they were carefully growing, they never understood that they were ordering something and bringing it to ruin, they never understood what that bastard child was and what that bastard child could do. They never knew.
Here is what many people will never know (even those in Konoha): the bastard child that caused more deaths than he stopped, the bastard child that was hailed as a genius, the bastard child that was an Uchiha, that bastard child that helped end the war disappeared without a trace three months after the war ended, (and with it, so did the kids on the street and those who had once been on the street and those left hurting and aching due to the harsh words of their own clans who should be family). People will note the disappearances and assume that they have gone away. These people will never come back. They will never be found.
And that bastard child will grow to be an adult and will grow to be strong and finally do what he wants, (and he will use seals and they will not be used to kill hundreds like what might have happened if he hadn't kept the skill close to his heart).
(And, maybe, there will be orders that the Uchiha Clan be massacred but when it comes time to do it, the clan will have disappeared for the most part, stolen away by the very wind, and they will not be seen again.)
There are whispers, rumours, and they are not of a bastard child belonging to Konoha. There are whispers and rumours and they will talk about a peaceful village on an island off of the coast of the Land of Lightning. There are rumours and whispers that talk about people who look exactly like you think they should, but your eye drops off of them. They will say there is no danger in this village. They will say it is peaceful. They will say it is normal. They will say it is friendly.
(They are right, but they are also wrong. This village is one of the most dangerous in the world, but they have had no reason to show it and so they won't. They have no ninjas. They just are.)
There are whispers and rumours of many things in the world. Most people don't believe them anymore.
The title is stolen from a line in the poem 'Sea Monster' by Emma Blaha. And, the story itself, was written thanks to a comment from Firefly_Aki. This is the edited version of how I replied in the comments.
There's no sense to the timelines nor am I sure of anything really. Like I said, it was written in response to a comment - it was not meant to make sense or anything, just be an idea. However, I have been convinced to start showing these AUs on AO3, so here's the first one. I'm assuming that it's probably written with the third war in mind? In short, he's born earlier. But I didn't actually have a timeline in mind for this or know how any of it all works out. Everyone just gets to deal with my lack of caring for this one.
One of the things I enjoyed in this was the transition of POV wherein Toru is called "it" and then that moves to "he". The transition worked well in moving from that more propaganda perspective to one that's a bit closer, I guess? Not quite sure how to phrase it. The outsider perspective was also a lot of fun to use, I will admit! I haven't used it tooooo often in this series, but it was good to play around with.
In regards to the fūinjutsu stuff and whether Toru's a reincarnated Uzushio ninja... I'm honestly not sure! Like I said, I wrote this eons ago and only rediscovered it out of nowhere. If Toru isn't reincarnated, there's a high chance that he just read a lot so he could survive in the war (... which I'm assuming is the third war, but who really knows). But I'm 80% certain that Toru doesn't return to Uzushio in this one. At least, I'm assuming that from the mention of the island off the coast of the Land of Lightning.
There's also a chance that Toru isn't actually an Aburame here - it's just assumed that because he uses summons and he's from Konoha. It could just be summons. No one but Toru probably knows, and that includes me.
I think my favourite line in this is about Toru stealing the Uchiha Clan away on the wind. I just loved that line.