Kill Your Heroes
-Chapter Sixty-Two-
Hiraeth (Part III)
Tsunade thought you could tell a lot about a culture by the spaces they did their drinking in.
Iron had a saying that the warmest place in any village was the tavern. Her experiences in them featured roaring fires, entire families crammed into tables scarred by generations, and the best way to prepare just about anything: process it into alcohol. Many—most, probably, though Shizune and the god-awful weather had prevented her from conducting an official census—of the taverns had begun their lives as houses and they'd never bothered to rebuild, just tacked rooms or sometimes nearby houses on, the crowd spilling from room to room rather than being housed in a single large, purpose-built space.
This one was one of the rambling kind and because it was early yet, she was able to secure a room and a bottle without much fuss. She set the two glasses down on the table with a thunk and waved at the seat opposite her. "Sit," she ordered when he didn't move immediately to seat himself.
He obeyed, but stiffly, and his scowl was about as pronounced as the musculature of the human face allowed. She remained standing for a moment as he jerked the chair back and settled into it with the kind of impatient insolence that was universal among teenagers, but only usually so pronounced in merchant-class civilians. He crossed his arms as she filled both glasses generously, liquid threatening to well over the top and only surface tension saving it from spilling onto the table.
His body language told her that not only was he not receptive to whatever she had to say, he didn't think her enough of a threat to keep his hands free—or he wanted her to think that he didn't regard her as a threat. As a younger woman, that would have struck the match to her explosive temper, but she was weathered now. More confident and more secure and more apathetic to the opinions of others—becoming a Sannin had given her the first and the second, while you couldn't be the kind of addict she'd been without the latter. She was steadier and slower in her anger now, if not wiser, though she hoped she was that too. There had to be some advantage to getting old.
Besides, for all his posturing, broken veins spiderwebbed across his sclera and his eyes were so red-rimmed as to look almost infected. His skin had crossed the point of paleness to that of poor health, made more obvious by the deep purple hollows beneath his eyes. He clearly hadn't slept well since he'd "killed" Itachi and enough time had elapsed between then and now that the lack would be preying on both his mind and reflexes. If he wasn't already moody and dogged by paranoia before, he'd be both by now.
She slid one of the glasses across the table to him, the liquid sloshing out, wetting the backs of her fingers.
"I don't drink," he sneered.
Tsunade snorted as she sank into her own chair. "There are some truths that are bettered washed down with something a little stronger than water. Though I would recommend drinking this a little slower than that if you want to remember this conversation after you've gone through all the trouble of having it," she told him wryly as she took a sip of her own. "Now, you've demanded I tell you the truth. You've apparently decided that I know what the unbiased truth is, despite not having been directly involved in any of it, so we're going to skip the whole "history is written by the victors" disclaimer, because that's not what you want, is it? You're not looking for the truth so much as an excuse. But that's fine. I can give you the truth as it was given to me and you can let your brother's actions be their own testimony."
Let me make it clear that I'm giving it to you not because of the power of those pretty eyes, but because I don't think that the feelings of a traitor should be taken into consideration and I don't believe that the story that we've bandied about for years serves our village in this instance. I won't be ashamed of our strength."
"Keep in mind," she told him after a second sip, after which she returned the glass to the table, "the motivations of your brother and this Madara. Why would your brother lie? Why would Madara tell you the truth?"
Sasuke leaned forward sharply, his hands coming forward to grip the edge of the table. "Then it's true?" he said roughly. "The village gave the order to murder my family?!"
Tsunade met his gaze evenly, even as the tomoe in his eyes began to swirl in agitation. She wasn't a genjutsu-type, but for all their power most Uchiha were as subtle with their illusions as bashing someone over the head with a hammer. The real danger was how difficult their genjutsu were to escape, but with her control and sensitivity she could break his hold on her mind and shove a jolt of medical chakra into his spine.
Not fatally, but enough to make him less annoying until Itachi arrived and could collect him. If he couldn't move anything below about C7, she could probably actually drink her drink instead of sipping.
"When someone decides to commit treason and plots the violent overthrow of the current government, that's a capital crime in any shinobi village. Carrying out the order of execution is not murder. That doesn't change when the scale does. When a clan decides that, yes, violence is a perfectly acceptable way to deal with problems they have with Kage and company, they're still criminals. From the point of view of the village, there's no magical, romantic moral superiority in being rebels. Depending on how deeply entrenched this rebellion is in a clan, on occasion, you can only pull them all out by the roots. Again, that's not murder, Uchiha. That's our process of justice. A police action."
Your family carried out that same sort of justice for years and years. I wonder how many records you could find of your clan killing someone for turning traitor. More than a handful, I'd wager, especially during wartime and in the early years of the village. They knew what they risked when they committed themselves to their plans. However loyal your brother was, he wouldn't have carried out the order if he thought it was unjustified. He traded his services for your safety. And your ignorance," she said pointedly.
"For reasons I can't imagine," she continued sardonically, "Itachi wanted to keep knowledge of your family's crimes from you. From everyone, so you could grow up the last son of a powerful clan who'd fallen on the sword of one mad shinobi, instead of their own ambition. The assets and the estate were left untouched, so that even if you had to live without your family, you wanted materially for nothing. And without your clan there to remind them of it, people forgot why they resented and feared the Uchiha. You grew up like a little orphaned prince and then threw all of that away. I wonder what your brother thought, when he heard?"
"You don't get to talk about my brother," Sasuke snarled, but there was something empty and desperate in his conviction. His knuckles were white with strain against the table and there was a flush of anger in his cheeks. Uchiha Sasuke, despite all evidence, was not stupid; he was instead intent on lashing out so that he didn't have to feel anything else or actually move past the trauma of his past.
Tsunade knew exactly what that felt like, only she'd by that point developed a phobia of blood and had to channel all that aggression into self-destruction instead.
"Oh? I can't? It seems to me that you're the one who betrayed him. Maybe you're the one who doesn't have the right to talk about Uchiha Itachi."
They hesitated on a precipice and for one moment, Tsunade thought that it had been one jibe too many—but then Sasuke sighed through clenched teeth and slumped back into his seat. "He made a mistake," he said as he slowly reached for his glass.
"Your brother?"
"The man who called himself Madara. He found me—found my team—almost immediately after," his throat worked as he swallowed, "after. He knew who I'd been fighting. He knew why we fought. Which meant that, despite knowing the truth, despite knowing that my brother was just a knife in some Hokage's hand, he stood there and watched and let me kill my brother. I don't know if I believe you when you say that my family were traitors or that they deserved to be massacred for it, but I know that I won't be used as a pawn in some stranger's game. Not after that."
"And what are you going to do instead?" Tsunade asked him. "Hunt this Madara like you hunted Itachi-san? I imagine one or more of your team is a tracker, because you don't seem the type to bother otherwise."
Sasuke finally took a sip of his drink and grimaced, which was almost enough to set Tsunade to laughing. Vodka was possibly the least offensive drink with any real alcohol content in existence. This was not goodvodka, but it didn't bite or burn or glow nearly neon in dim light. She probably should have chosen something else, something serious and grim that would gleam golden amber in the firelight. Something meant for drinking, instead of just getting drunk, but she'd spent years content that wet and cheap for sufficient recommendations for alcohol.
"You're hunting Akatsuki," he said, shoving the glass away from him.
"We've hunted Akatsuki," she corrected. "Now we're going to war with the village behind them. From the sound of things, your Madara will likely be a part in that war. And I'm not going to order my shinobi to stand down so that you can hunt him for yourself, if that's what you're getting at."
"And if I cooperated with you?"
Tsunade blinked at the unexpected offer. "You mean, hunt him in cooperation with a Konohagakure team? Uchiha, if the man claiming to be Madara is even half as dangerous as the real thing, it's still an S-class mission. It's not like providing security for some rich man's birthday party, where trust between team members is useful but not critical. I can't trust you, because you've made it very clear you'll prioritize your own agenda over any order I give. What makes you think that I'd risk shinobi like Hatake Kakashi or Haruno Sakura by asking them to trust you?"
It was his turn to be surprised. "Sakura?" he asked blankly.
"…you're like the dictionary definition of tunnel vision," Tsunade told him when she decided that his surprise wasn't feigned. "Witch and Hound are about as close as we get to hunter-nin in Konohagakure. If there was going to be a dedicated hunt for an S-class target, they'd be part of it," she told him. "Your last encounter with them was, what, over a year ago now? I don't remember the details, but I do recall that hope for reconciliation didn't play a huge part of in anyone's report except for Naruto's. Neither of them are the sort to refuse an order," though passive-aggressive-Kakashi would probably be enough to make her regret it if she did, "but why would I give it?"
"Whether or not he's Madara, he is an Uchiha," Sasuke retorted. "And I am your best chance to strike him down."
Tsunade raised her brows skeptically. "True or not, why would you want to work with us at all? You left Konohagakure when it suited you and while your team is from Otogakure, killing its Kage is a pretty good indication that you don't have much use for a village. I'm certainly not going to spend even an iota of effort to stop you from throwing yourself at an enemy of my village. If you succeed, I might even send you a Thank You card."
The muscles worked in his jaw and Tsunade wondered if he'd thought she'd fall down in gratitude for the opportunity to help him carry out his newest mission of vengeance. Not that she wouldn't use him—passive-aggressive-Hatake was preferable to disappointed-elder-Uchiha—but there was a way to it. Uchiha Sasuke had gotten accustomed to thinking of himself as the one negotiating from the position of power, but this wasn't the case here. He'd have to learn to humble himself and ask nicely.
Some part of her was distinctly amused that apprenticing under someone as insidious as Orochimaru—who was silver-tongued when it suited him—had left him still so bereft of basic social skills. Maybe it was for the best he hadn't stayed under Hatake's command; he might have been reduced to just growling at people by this point.
"I want to come back," Sasuke said between clenched teeth, "because my tracker can't trace Madara. But he'll come for you."
Tsunade found it telling that he'd already made the attempt, but the fact that he'd wanted a conversation instead of a confrontation was proof enough on its own that he'd distrusted what their mystery shinobi had to say. "Why not just keep working for Akatsuki? You've already caused enough trouble on their behalf by capturing the Eight-Tails. He'd contact you again."
"Except I didn't capture Kumogakure's jinchuriki. He'd told me that aniki acted on the village's orders to carry out the massacre; my brother wouldn't suddenly decide to actually defect after that. Akatsuki was just another mission, wasn't it? The Kyūbi was his assignment. I know better than anyone that he could have taken Naruto at any time. He didn't, so I didn't take the Hachibi. Whatever they're doing with the tailed beasts isn't something they bothered to explain and I was more interested in gaining just enough of their trust to leave without them looking over my shoulder. My skillset isn't meant for capture missions and they ought to know that. I wasn't afraid of being blamed, but I didn't realize the jinchuriki himself would be useful. He was alive and outside Akatsuki's control when I left him."
"That's not the story that the Raikage is telling."
Sasuke shrugged. "Like I said, he was alive when I left him and in no danger of that changing. What he did after that isn't my problem. I'm not interested in helping Akatsuki's cause, even if I was interested in playing long games."
"So, say we're useful to you. And after?"
"After?" he asked, like he hadn't even considered that there would be an after.
"Yes, after. What, you thought that you'd kill him and the world would just slam to a stop? Didn't work so well with your last vengeance, did it?"
There was a long, pregnant silence and then Sasuke said, "…the Third is dead. The other people who were involved in the decision to execute my family, are they still alive? Madara gave me a name. Danzō. Is he still alive? He said that he'd be attending the summit."
"As of about an hour and a half ago, yes, he was alive. Several of the others that would have been involved in the investigation and in the final decision are still hobbling along, but they were elders even then. They're wily old foxes, to be sure, and Danzō's certainly got plenty of bite left, but given another decade or less and time will do your work for you. Not much glory there. And, given warning, not nearly as easy as you found hunting your brother. They're old men and women, but the shinobi of Konohagakure will stand between you and them. In other words, Uchiha, however annoying I find them personally, I'm not going to hand them over to you so you can keep on marching blithely down your path of vengeance."
Sasuke considered this, then sank slowly back into his seat. "We hunt Madara successfully and you allow me access to the records. If I'm satisfied that my family actually planned to revolt, I'll end it. I'll surrender myself to your justice."
Tsunade scoffed. "If you're satisfied? I'll allow you access to something even better than records. I'll let you talk to one of the primary sources. And then, satisfied or not, you're going to stand down and surrender yourself to my justice. Capiche?"
A very long, tense silence, and then—"Understood."
"Good. I'll even give you an advance on my end of the bargain. It's about time you told your little brother the truth, isn't it, Uchiha Itachi?"
[Kill Your Heroes]
Sakura's most pressing worry twelve minutes ago was that it had been a mistake to say yes to Itachi—since the words had slipped from her lips, there was an uncertainty riding her bones that she hadn't felt in years and years (though it wasn't uncertainty about Itachi's feelings: committed-to-Itachi was also openly-affectionate-Itachi), but the idea of having him had been too powerful and hurting him unpalatable—and now it was whether her nerve would fail her at using Hiraishin and natural chakra again.
She wouldn't let it, but she'd never felt pain like that before either, like her chakra channels had become pathways of fire and stepping out of the flame meant death or failure. She hadn't had the courage to fully test what the natural chakra had done to her interior landscape and what might happen if she used it again. Where once she'd meditated daily, she'd fed herself excuses about time and lack of opportunity and now could only swallow down the bitterness of being unprepared.
Sakura would walk through fire to step between her Hokage and Sasuke. She would. That did not mean that she did not fear being burned.
She and senpai stood sentinel on either side of the doorway, Jiraiya-sama leaning casually against the frame, as Itachi stood silently in front of a dumbstruck Sasuke—who, after only moments, turned on her with the most vicious expression she'd ever seen on his face, including after she'd made him kill his mother. "You," he snarled, "this is you doing this."
Sakura's hands hadn't left the hilts of her knives from the moment she'd sensed Sasuke's chakra and unsealed them, so it was less than a thought for their weight to settle comfortably in her palms, and she shifted her weight, ready to go between. Her blades were clean of poison and she regretted that, but they were sharp enough to cut through bone.
"Please," Itachi murmured without glancing over at her.
Sakura didn't respond or spare him any attention, focused instead on the enemy in front of her. She did not trust Sasuke and she did not trust Itachi's judgement when it came to his little brother. Sasuke was a dangerous enemy with the advantage of the Sharingan. His skill with ninjutsu wasn't something someone like Sakura could scoff at, though she had confidence that her foot- and blade-work was better than Sasuke's. The real contest would be speed. They would both strike to kill, though the chances that Itachi would interfere were quite high.
"Leaving aside that Sakura would show you an illusion of myself in disguise, little brother, mother called you her little duckling from the time you could toddle until after your third year at the Academy, when you decided you were too old for nicknames. That didn't stop you from following her around the house, however. You really were adorable as a child."
"He still has a certain charm," Kakashi-senpai added lackadaisically. "Some people like sour things."
Sasuke's scowl didn't soften, but his hands dropped away from his chokuto. "What's going on here?" he demanded.
"This isn't the illusion," Sakura replied scathingly. "Your battle with Uchiha-san was."
"I'd have known if it was a genjutsu," Sasuke snapped.
"Would you have? You can't even tell that the real person is standing right in front of you now," Sakura said.
"That was a very unusual technique," Itachi interjected, "that involved the use of a flesh-and-blood vessel and made full use of both your genjutsu and your medical knowledge. If it was known of and ranked, I have no doubts that it would have been considered S-class. You weren't meant to see through it, little brother."
Sakura's fingers tightened on her knives, hair prickling along her forearms and stomach twisting uncomfortably at that particular technique being spoken of in public.
"My apologies. I know it is rude to ask everyone to step outside, but may I ask for some time alone with my brother?" Itachi asked.
"Go for it," Tsunade-sama said, collecting her glass and bottle of alcohol from the table. "Now that my stalwart protectors are here, I can sit down and have a real drink."
Sakura obediently followed Tsunade-sama from the room, concealing her knives within the conveniently long fall of her coat. They hadn't had time or cause to fully shed their civilian guises, especially as they hadn't yet crossed the border.
"If you're hungry, go to the bar and get something to eat," Tsunade-sama told both of them as she setting at a table near one of the windows. "Family melodrama always takes a while even when they aren't bodies involved."
She and senpai exchanged a speaking glance and senpai shrugged, divesting himself of his coat and settling himself comfortably in a chair at the end of the table. A somewhat ragged novel was produced in short order and he seemed intent on ignoring the drinking party forming at the table as Jiraiya-sama returned from investigating the food offerings. Sakura hesitated briefly before sloughing her own coat, pretending an ease she was far from feeling.
At least initially.
After a restroom break that was following by a cup of steaming hot chocolate swimming with marshmallows, Sakura was considering following the example of her fellow patrons and indulging in the heavy, fantastic-smelling food that the servers kept sweeping by with. As she was contemplating some sort of meat pie on the next table over, senpai nudged her with his knee.
"Buy me dinner," he told her without looking up from his book.
"Why should I?" Sakura retorted.
"Because you love me."
Sakura narrowed her eyes at him. "If we were dating, senpai, I'd put a collar on you and tell you that you were a bad dog and teach you some manners."
There was a strangled sound from Jiraiya-sama's direction and Sakura flushed as she realized that, despite all appearances, Tsunade-sama and Jiraiya-sama hadn't been as entangled in their own conversation as she'd thought.
Her blush only deepened when Kakashi-senpai blandly replied, "What, you're going to tell me to stay off the bed? This collar ought to be lined with something. Leather makes me sweat."
"Wait, wait, wait," Jiraiya-sama said, one hand outstretched as if he could really hold back this conversation. "I thought you and the prettier Uchiha had an understanding?"
"Itachi-san? Good job securing that one, Haruno," Tsunade-sama said, lifting her glass in a toast.
"Who gets rid of the dog just because they've brought in a spouse?" Kakashi-senpai replied in response to Jiraiya-sama's comment. "I don't mind. I've already lived with that rampaging cat for so long, adding one more person to the household won't make any difference. At least I won't ever have to worry about waking up to find Itachi-san staring at me like he's composing a list of ways to kill me while he lurks atop your closet."
Sakura considered letting her head fall against the table with a solid thunk, but retreated with slightly more dignity, waving over a server and ordering food for both herself and senpai.
Judging by the gleam in both Tsunade-sama and Jiraiya-sama's eyes, though, they weren't about to let her off so easily. By the time that Itachi and an extremely subdued Sasuke appeared from the room next door, Sakura was grateful that after the first round of teasing, the talk had turned back to a much quieter and more subdued discussion of how Konohagakure could feasibly launch a war with their village destroyed.
"So, that's it then?" Tsunade-sama asked. "Are you satisfied now, Uchiha-san?"
Sasuke nodded, an abbreviated and abrupt gesture, and Sakura could not help but note that his eyes were even more red-rimmed than when they'd left the brothers. Itachi's were as well, more faintly, and that curbed a little of the vicious stab of satisfaction she felt when looking at the clearly miserable Sasuke.
"Good. Now we can go home. Perhaps if you really distinguish yourself in this coming war, you'll enjoy the benefits of selective memory and get to stay there without much fuss. Women have a soft spot for prodigal sons."
Though she offered to wait for the brothers to eat if they were hungry, both declined, so the party settled their bill and bundled back up for the cold. Sasuke's team had been lurking nearby and were retrieved shortly and then this motley company turned their feet back toward Konohagakure.
Tsunade-sama had ordered that since it was Sasuke's team dressed as ninja, it was they who could keep formation—wealthy merchant families hiring armed guards when traveling wasn't unusual enough to be remarked upon. The others were left to travel as they pleased, so Sakura was by senpai's side, discretely analyzing Sasuke's team. She told herself that it was purely an exercise in awareness of a potential hostile force, but the restless part of her could not help but wonder what it was these people had that Team Seven had lacked.
It was a mostly silent and uncomfortable journey until after they crossed the border, where Sakura was glad to shed her disguise and be able to wear her knives and kit openly.
"Well, aren't you just pretty as a flower?" Sasuke's shark-toothed swordsman—Suigetsu—said as she came down the stairs of the inn. Sakura, who was tucking the last unruly strands of hair up into a careless bun, fixed unamused dragon-green eyes on him, which caused his grin to falter momentarily. "Okay, another instance of crazy eyes from Konohagakure. Still pretty, though."
"If you're flirting with intent, I'm seeing someone," Sakura replied, ignoring the way that Sasuke had glanced over at the comment about her eyes.
"Too bad," Suigetsu said. "I'm quite the catch."
This caused the red-headed kunoichi to snort and roll her eyes. "Really, Suigetsu?"
"Just because people won't give you the time of day doesn't mean you need to be a bitch, Karen," he sneered at his teammate. "Pretty girls get options."
In Sakura's opinion, Karen was quite pretty, but her temper was vicious when it came to her white-haired teammate and she was almost cringingly fawning when she spoke to Sasuke. There was an uncomfortable echo of old-Sakura there, but Sakura ignored the discomfort. She thought she'd probably find the other kunoichi quite tolerable, but even though they'd been sharing rooms since the teams had begun traveling together—her marriage ruse with Itachi had fallen by the wayside—Karen hardly spoke to her.
"You were clingy when we were teammates and now you're vicious. Who'd be stupid enough to date you?" Sasuke asked, ignoring the way his teammates were about to engage in round three-hundred and forty-seven of the argument that seemed to never end.
"I have no complaints about Sakura's personality," was Itachi's even reply, which brought the war between Suigetsu and Karen to a dead silence.
"Say what?" Sasuke ground out eventually.
"Your brother is the person stupid enough to date me," Sakura sighed. "Of course, he's also the person stupid enough to want to save you, so I suppose we should both be grateful for his terrible judgement."
Sasuke's eyes flicked between Sakura and Itachi, as if he was waiting for one of them to announce that it was a joke and his expression blackened as no such announcement was forthcoming.
"You can't be serious," he said to Itachi, whose brow rose as the accusation.
"You've told me of your grievances, but what occurred between you was on the battlefield. Let it go."
Sasuke's expression was the definition of unwilling and he glared at Sakura like it was somehow her fault that his brother wasn't unilaterally siding with him. To be fair, Sakura thought grudgingly despite herself, that had been a very ugly sort of trick.
"I was trying to prove to Itachi that you weren't worth it," she said abruptly. "All of this," she made a vague motion with her hand, "Most of it done for your sake. And I didn't think you deserved it. So I decided to show him your ugliest self. Maybe I'll regret it, maybe I won't. We weren't friends, so I won't say, "let's be friends again, for your brother's sake." But we were allies. We can be that again. You've seen my genjutsu and I've watched your ninjutsu. You've met my knives and I've been introduced to your sword. We can be useful to each other."
Sasuke's dark eyes were suspicious and narrow as he met her gaze. "What happened to your eyes?" he asked instead of giving an answer. "They weren't like this last time."
"Combat incident," Sakura replied, then her lips quirked. "Chakra-induced cell mutation. Who knows, maybe something like this is the way your kekkei genkai originated."
Sasuke grunted, then slowly nodded his head. "Fine. Allies."
Kakashi-senpai chose this moment to say, "So, is this what heartwarming family moments are going to look like once you're in-laws?"
[Kill Your Heroes]
The time it had taken for the alliance to fall through had not been sufficient for them to return to a repaired Konohagakure. The bodies that had resisted resurrection or died twice within an hour had been cremated as soon as could be managed and they'd cleared the roads and stabilized the areas which had collapsed into the cave systems below the city. Priority was given to restoring infrastructure and government buildings, leaving private ones for the moment to individual enterprise.
In short, the city still looked as if someone had plowed roads through some massive landfill.
"What is this?" Sasuke asked, staring at the wreckage that little resembled the proud village he'd left.
"This is just the first strike in a long war," came Tsunade-sama's reply. "Take a good look around as we cross into the city, Uchiha. This is what happens when you let violence visit you in your own city. This is what your clan died to prevent."
