Prologue: child of forgiveness
Sun is melting down the edge of the last leaf of Konohagakure, it's light spreading and bouncing on tufts of dreams, splattering into vermillian, magenta, grey, fuschia off the blue of Shinachiku's eyes, as he stood there transfixed, glued in the clay of the dumpster graveyard. He's been staring and staring and staring - for Kami knows how long, the man from the picture folded in his shirt's front pocket, or so was he told by his tou-san,standing right there, in the last place he'd expected to see him. A lone figure in an empty graveyard on the outskirts of the village. Uchiha Sasuke - the man with dark looks and a peculiar duckbutt who was friends with his parents, who had left them for some "family business"( as the way kaa-san worded it) when they were a part of the genin team, and who according to rumours his parents refused to address came back straight away to their fire nation's jail as a highly controversial international criminal, only to leave them immediately after, and never be heard of again, at least by the commoners. He used to write letters to old man Kakashi, but stopped contacting them some time after he was born. According to tou-san, "bastard ghosted out right when I became the hokage", with no bite or bitterness on his face or voice, or perhaps in the other man's intentions, at all.
Chrysanthemums, not quite as luminous nor vibrant as the ones from auntie Ino's shop, rest on a stone where the name Itachi Uchiha rests in desolation. The man's face is morbid, for a while it seems he might as well have been one of the bodies from the graves who opened the lids of Yomi; face ashen, pale, eyes drooped in apathy, shoulders hunched in misery, fingers tracing the carvings, shaking with the leaves sticking on his black cape that drapes over his left arm.
Shina frowns, as the sun goes further down south, towards the mansion of the Fire nation's daimyo, Ikkyuu, the old man with the green beard( who on earth has green beard?!- he had scrunched his face at the outlandish colour, "rich, coming from the son of a woman with pink hair", Tsuna baa-chan had quipped in the ceremony hall). The ceremonial dinner, hosted by the wealthy Fire nation's daimyo, was attended by nearly all the rich ninja socialites.
His father had first planned to go all be himself, but later on decided against it, which meant five hours of constant grilling by his mother to behave or else with the scary mom glare and all the rich people cacophony, which according to auntie Ino, is actually very different from the obnoxious loudness his father blared 24/7 as a kid. His parents were not born particularly wealthy, his father had lived most of his childhood in neglect and ostracisation, scraping on monthly stipends, and the habit of spending money in scruples had stayed with him till date. His mother was born to a normal civilian family, had decided to become a kunoichi cause "it was cool back then"( as tou-sanwould snicker and mouth Sasuke-kuuuun with heart eyes, in an apparent imitation of his mom's childhood self, which would earn him a non-chakra enhanced smack in the head; he knew his mom could crack his skull if she was serious) but never had she expected to be teamed up with star crossed soul brothers alien transmigrants tangled in an intergenerational brotherhood conflict. Shina didn't like it but he surely could understand why his parents were so high profile and celebrated, according to "lore", yes they were that old, they were war heroes. His father had singlehandedly saved their village from a foreign invader once, and his mother was the famous across borders as the best medical ninja, both of them venerated war heroes.
There is nothing worse in the world than having celebrity parents, though, he scrunches his nose in disapproval. He gets distracted really easily.
Sunlight lingers on the last thread of his clothes as the man turns around to see him, coal eyes searing back at him, as they widen for the slightest of what maps like a nanometre; he approaches him, stooping down to his eye level - and Shina has an urge to run away from the bottomless eyes cause this man looks like a haggard freak - nothing like the mystical unicorn prince charming his father described him as - up close, he's frightening. His eyes are frigid, closed off and bottomless, so this is what it must be like to see a criminal up close, he thinks to himself. Ex-criminal, his mind corrects, his tou-san has some messiah-nic powers that can reform the hardest of souls on the planet, even Kurama once used to be a fearsome demon once, if tou-san can set a beast straight, what folly can a puny human commit, he assures himself.
Sasuke stares at the child in front of him. He is seething in rage, in splittering kindreds, the ones that churn your blood and make you seethe your veins, and he doesn't really know what he's angry for, or what he's angry at. He's been an angry man for most of his life - angry at the dead and the living, at the nascent, at the obstacles, at the bystanders, angry at the world, his entire teenage life was a temper tantrum, Seigetsu had once snarked, sincere to the last water drop in his body. Now he's calmed down, grown up, not really angry anymore; so he's been told, and so he believes, and yet, a little bubble of anger he'd buried somewhere inside has erupted, for the first time in years. He doesn't really know where it came from, or maybe he does, he just can't put a finger on the source of it, it's like he's back to being 16, insolent, foolish, and self-fixated as he was, or maybe he never really grew out of it. The peace inside him was merely an illusion, just like the peace oustide. He spares a glance at the kid, who's been gawking at him for quite a while now, and immediately something arrests his attention, taking away the anguish out and replacing it with a familiar pain in his chest.
The sky takes him in with a countenance of fear, wonder, apprehension and curiosity all at once, with the same childlike mischeivousness he once saw in a foolish looking blonde kid, scanning his shitty outfit( he knows he looks like a homeless beggar, he hasn't changed his clothes in a week now, and the journey had worn him out) with the same naive judgement he saw once in a pair of green eyes. He is small, a little fellow, a splitting image of him - Juugo's voice informing him of Naruto's and Sakura's newborn baby echoes back from somewhere in his brain, and throbs against his eardrums, materialising in front if him in the shape of this...shadow clone.
He had been released from jail the year he'd been born. He remembers how stressed out Naruto was, his endless whining about the elders not granting him a parole to attend his wedding. Sasuke wanted to tell him he probably wouldn't attend his wedding even if he was a free man anyway, he was not one for ceremonies and rituals, especially not of the Leaf anyway, but decided against ruining his pre-nuptials.
So he stayed quiet, watching Naruto rant ferally, finally resigning and settling down with a crestfallen face. "Shikamaru is throwing me a bachelor's party tonight, I invited Gaara too, but he was busy with the kazekague duties", he pouted, "I am getting married, and my friends are either away brooding in jail or doing paper work in office, even Sakura-chan won't be there."
"It's a bachelor's party Naruto, and she's your fiancee," was the expected dry response, "B..But ...ughh Sasukeee you don't understand! What is the point of me celebrating my bachelor life if I can't do it with my friends!"
"Shikamaru, Choji, Kiba are your friends too?"
"Yeah, but I want all of my friends there...", Naruto smiles, not quite uncharacteristically, staring up at the wall of the prison, fingers curling around the rods. It was forbidden for anyone save the jail guards to come in this highly monitored section, but which power on their planet would stop Naruto?
Sasuke stared at Naruto's upturned profile in the dimly let chamber, the curve of his lips lifting his cheeks, and in that glance he knew, he'd known this smile for too long to not notice it, it was one of Naruto's personalised stepford smiles. Years had gone by but Naruto is Naruto, still as naive as ever, still as cunning as when he wanted to be. Compartmentalising and cherrypicking the golden parts of his heart and putting them on display. He knew Naruto had been trying his best to get him out of jail for the past few years, which he frankly, found as selfish as selfless of him, given fucking Mizuki, the dude Sato, his jail neighbour told him had once tricked Naruto into stealing a scroll, was still rotting in jail. Sure, Mizuki was a piece of shit, but the stench of his shit smelt of roses if you compared it to Sasuke's criminal record. Even from a moral perspective, had Mizuki ever planned to slaughter an entire village, or stabbed his friend's lung( gone for the heart actually) for power? Sasuke knew Naruto was not a fool, nor an unshaking saint that could "take all the hate" on himself, or maybe he was and he had underestimated him, like always; he knew what it's like to be alone in a pool of ass-kissing admirers left and right.
"Still such a child, Naruto", he mirrored with a stepford smile of his own, his self shocked at the relevation, since when did he began the poster boy of rainbows and sunshine like Naruto, since when did he even begin to try ; inspite of rarely seeing him those days, it seemed like Naruto has rubbed off on him. Or maybe it was just the ambience of the jail is what is doing weird things to his brain, the other day he found himself initaiting a conversation with Sato. Naruto nodded at him, quietly, shaking his hand, and his golden mane disappeared in the blackness of the exit gate.
It's hilarious, in a moment, that causes his heart to fly, as he takes in and swallows sunshine blonde hair, whiskers on the cheeks, and a really huge forehead. His feet drag towards the spot the kid is trembling at, as his knees crouch down, and his hands ruffle the soft tuft of his golden locks, his body has suspended all voluntary action, it just moves on it's own.
Yomi= hell in Shinto mythology
Konoha is the military part of Land of fire, this is cannon fact, source is Kishimoto's interview. Ikkyuu is the current daimyo in Boruto era. This was an idea I'd been toying around with for quite some time, an alternate post-cannon scenario, without the space alien thing. Timeline is 13 years since chapter 699.