Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto.
This chapter of Ashen is dedicated to the 100th reviewer of Bloodless, rickrossed, who wished for either an Uchiha Fugaku point of view, or a Kakashi one. Here's something about Uchiha Fugaku. I hope you like it.
"Some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall."
—Escalus in Measure for Measure, William Shakespeare, 1603
The night of October Tenth is pain, fear, and a thousand other things for Uchiha Fugaku. The village is decimated. Civilians that he'd sworn to protect with his life lie dead in the streets. And he had not seen either of his two sons since he'd stopped by Itachi's bedroom on the way to work that morning.
So if his night had been bad, then really, the red sun rising just made everything much worse.
He'd been on his way to the shelters to find the rest of his family-Mikoto. Itachi. Sasuke.-praying that they'd be there, that they'd be alright, when the glint of something white in the morning sun catches his eye.
He almost doesn't stop-just leave the clean up for the clean up crews. Itachi and Sasuke are more important-but he does stop, pulled by some awful and powerful force to turn down that side street and pick up the broken silver chain glittering in the rubble.
A jasmine flower. A foot away a bloody hand protrudes from the rubble. His mind goes blank. No. No. It cannot be.
He's pawing through the broken stone and gathered debris with his bare hands a moment later. Wild, blood soaked dark hair, thin shoulders-he flips the woman over. No, it can't be-
"Kosshi. Inuzuka Kosshi." The prim and proper girl with wild hair throws back her shoulders and straightens her spine. It looks like she has a steel rod there to be honest.
"Uchiha Fugaku." He offers. "Heir to the Uchiha Clan."
"Don't be so haughty." She frowns at him. "We're equals."
The word doesn't quite sit right with him. You're just a girl who's two months younger than me. We aren't equals at all. "You're younger than me."
"I'm the Inuzuka Heiress." She crosses her arms over her chest. "So if we're debating titles, that makes me your equal."
"I thought your older brother's the heir." Inuzuka Kegawa is a year older than himself, and Fugaku knows that his own age is eight, which means that her brother has to be at least a year older than her, she's only a few months younger than him after all. That makes Kegawa the heir, because that's how inheritance works.
I'm the heir because I'm Tou-san's only child. That's how it works.
"My brother doesn't inherit." She considers her words for a moment. "Neither of my brothers will inherit my Kaa-san's position as clan head." Her chin juts out and dares him to disagree. "I'm the only daughter. That means I'm Kaa-san's heir."
"Girls don't inherit." Fugaku crosses his arms as well, irritated now. "Everyone knows that. Telling a lie like that's super dumb."
Her eyes narrow and she stamps her foot. "You just don't think I'm your equal. But I think you're rotten and stupid." She throws up her hands and stomps away into the swirling mass of people.
"My sun and stars?" His Kaa-san appears from the crowd of winter festival goers. "The Inuzuka are announcing their future heiress tonight."
Heiress. Female. Not Heir. Male.
"But Kaa-san." He whispers while taking his mother's hand. "I thought Kegawa was the Heir?"
"The Inuzuka inherit from their mother, sun and stars." His Kaa-san comments absently. "The clan head is always a clan daughter."
Oh. That means I've wronged her...She is the heiress after all if she said it.
Because he'd made such a mess of his first conversation with Inuzuka Kosshi, he's determined not to do the same thing again. "Kaa-san, if I want to say sorry to a girl, how should I do that?"
His Kaa-san looks down at him from where she'd been washing dishes. "Well, what sort of girl are you trying to say sorry to, my sun and stars?"
He thinks back to how she'd first appeared. Brazen. Proper. Proud. "Someone distinguished. Proud." He flushes as he realizes that Kaa-san is looking at him with a raised eyebrow. "An Heiress, Kaa-san."
"Well," Kaa-san begins. "If she's an heiress you'll want to get her flowers." Flowers? Those have meanings right?
Well if he's going to apologize, and Kaa-san has decreed it must be flowers, then he's going to do it correctly.
Everything has its proper place, Fugaku. You must do correctly, or not do at all. Tou-san's words about propriety echo in his mind. Complete the task set to you, or do not begin.
"Thank you for your advice, Kaa-san." He hugs her briefly, missing the sadness in her eyes, and turns to leave.
Poppies for success and happiness. No that's not it. She's not poppies. He sets the large dusty tome of Hanakotoba down on the table in front of him, and flips through another page. Jasmine. Grace. That's better. She might be jasmines.
He hurriedly flips towards the end of the book. There are still clan duties to accomplish, and his free time is growing short. Violet. Honesty. That's it.
That's what she is. Honesty that he'd called a lie.
But she's also more durable than any flowers he could get her, and he wants his apology to be just as durable.
Maybe a hair pin? He'd have to stop by the jeweler's later.
Now, if only he could find Inuzuka Kosshi before sunset, that would be fantastic. With a heavy heart, he stops scanning the surrounding area, and makes his way towards the Inuzuka Compound. Might she be at home?
"Excuse me?" He interrupts an old woman by the kennels. "Do you happen to know where Inuzuka Kosshi is?"
"Oh, Kosshi-hime?" The old woman smiles cheerfully at him, and he notes that her canines are indeed fangs. "She's down by the river, little boy."
He doesn't like being called little boy, and likes even less the casual hand that ruffles his carefully straightened hair, but the woman is an elder. He will pay her the proper respect.
"My thanks, Obaa-san." He bows to her, exactly as deeply as her station deserved from him, and sets off towards the Naka river, his apology still clenched firmly in his fist.
He does find her where the Naka River bends away from the Inuzuka Compound, she's there with a little gray puppy and judging from the laughter curling towards him, they're having a lot of fun.
"Kosshi-san." He calls, and she turns to regard him for a moment, with those dark and serious eyes, but then she turns away.
He sighs, and moves closer to where she's still splashing around in the water, her skirt hiked up to her knees. "I wanted to say I'm sorry." He thrusts his hand forward.
She turns to regard him with a quizzical expression. "What?"
"I said, I'm here to say I'm sorry." Are all girls this frustrating? If they are I never want to get married to Mikoto. She'd be awful, just like this one. He opens his fist, the violet themed hair pin glittered in the light of the dying sun. But then, Mikoto's never been irritating before.
She gasps. "Did you get it for me?" And in that moment Fugaku thinks that maybe Kaa-san should call Inuzuka Kosshi 'sun and stars' instead. Her face is the sun, and her eyes are like brightly shining stars.
"They're violets for honesty." She tilts her head towards him, and he slides the pin into her dark hair, the violets flashing.
She throws her arms around him in a burst of unexpected warmth. "You should come over for dinner. " She takes his hand and drags him down the river bank, the puppy trailing behind them. "Kaa-san won't mind. She loves friends."
"And Team Nine will be Hyuga Hizashi, Inuzuka Kosshi and Uchiha Fugaku."
Kosshi cheers loudly while throwing an arm around his neck. "We're on a team together!"
He reminds himself that he likes this girl. This girl who's brazen and proud, who's unabashedly honest and cheerful. He reminds himself this because he's only known her for about a week.
Hyuga Hizashi sends him a pitying look. Fugaku glares at him until he turns away.
"And this is Cousin Kouga." She gestures to the older boy lying around on the couch in the living room as they return from team practice. "I'm supposed to marry him when I grow up." She will? He pushes the stab of disquiet away. I'm supposed to marry Mikoto anyway.
"You make that sound like it's a bad thing, darling." Kouga grins up at her from his reclining position. "You know I'm your favorite cousin."
She wacks him in the stomach. "You know you're so full of it, idiot." She stands above him with a hand on her hip. "I'm introducing you to my teammate today, so sit up properly alright?"
Kouga flips himself upright. "Yeah, yeah."
"This is Uchiha Fugaku, my best friend." Kosshi gestures to him. "He's a bit stiff, but he's mostly alright."
Kouga offers him a hand, and a fanged smile. "I'm Inuzuka Kouga."
"And I'm Uchiha Fugaku." No one is going to intimidate me. I'm going to make another friend even if it kills me.
By the kunai sharp edge of Kouga's smile though, it looks increasingly as if he just might die of friendship.
"And this is Cousin Mikoto." He pulls Kosshi along through the doorway of his house. "She's my fiancee." Fugaku had attempted to put off this meeting, but he'd been overruled by Mikoto.
Her exact words had been. "If you're going to become friends with an Inuzuka Girl, it doesn't matter if she's their heiress Fugaku, then I'm going to pass sentence on her."
Mikoto is quiet, demure, and steely, but she and Kosshi share many similarities and a few differences that would rub each other raw.
Kosshi looks Mikoto over. "Aren't you rather too pretty to be a ninja?"
Mikoto frowns. "And aren't you too brash to be friends with an Uchiha?"
"I don't see how that's much of your business." Kosshi sets her hands on her hips.
"Do you even know his favorite color?" Mikoto stalks forward and they stand together, nose to nose. "His favorite food? His favorite flowers? What do you know about him anyway?" This will end, very badly.
"Mikoto, please."
She glares at him. "You have no say in this."
His fiancee is a tigress when she's angry, and clearly she finds Kosshi irritating. Fugaku himself doesn't know what to feel about it. Why is she so upset about the fact that I've gained a friend?
"What does knowing any of that have to do with being friends with 'Gaku?" Kosshi blinks. "It has nothing to do with anything at all."
Mikoto drags her away towards the kitchen. "You're coming with me."
Fugaku drags a hand over his face. Why is this my life?
"Oh for goodness sake. I'm not going to marry him of all people!" Kosshi throws up her hands and stalks out of the kitchen. "And I know how to make my idiot's favorite food so it's all good right?"
Mikoto trails after a smile on her face. "So you just want to be his friend?"
Kosshi whirls around. "I've been slated to marry Cousin Kouga since I was two years old." She speaks slowly, as if to someone who is particularly slow. "I happen to like my idiot, why would I trade him for someone else?"
"We can be great friends then." Mikoto beams and slides an arm through Kosshi's, and they walk off, arm in arm. "Come on Fugaku, we should go out and eat dango."
Kosshi begs leave after only a single skewer, and whistles for Hatsumaru and they walk off together.
"You shouldn't be so mean, Mikoto." He states very calmly. "If you'd scared her off it wouldn't be nice."
Mikoto blinks at him, innocence dripping from every feature. "Since when have you cared about nice when there's dango involved?"
"I thought I'd have to get to know ya." Kouga appears at Fugaku's habitual training field without fanfare.
"I don't think I'm interested." Fugaku turns and begins punching the post instead.
"Is it because I'm going to marry Kosshi?" The Inuzuka's suddenly sitting on top of the post, staring into his eyes without a hint of fear. "And don't tell me any lies, I can smell them."
"It's because I didn't sign up to know everything about her entire extended family." Fugaku states flatly. I might not think you're good enough for her, but I don't want to marry her myself, that would just be weird.
"Nah, you just don't think she and I mesh very well, don'tcha." Kouga hops off the post. "I don't think you're really her normal friend material, but she happens t'like ya. I ought to be friendly."
Remember my sun and stars, friendships come in all types.
"I wouldn't be opposed." It is again, his Kaa-san's words that are his saving grace. Thank you for reminding me, Kaa-san.
"Well ya won't regret it." Kouga smirks. "Let's go for a spar. You 'n me."
"Well then come on." I'll beat you black and blue.
The four of them go out together on a double date at the winter festival. It is a rare year, there's a light dusting of snow on the ground, and Kosshi and Kouga walk, arm in arm.
Fugaku prefers to simply hold Mikoto's hand.
"Look, Idiot, they're selling wishes." Kosshi bounces forwards, dragging Kouga forwards as well.
"What're you wishin' for, darling?" He doesn't seem to mind, just letting her pull him forward without batting an eyelash.
"To be rid of you permanently." She deadpans. "It'll suit me just fine."
He gasps mockingly and clutches his heart with a hand. "You break me, darlin'. You don't know how much that hurts." But he buys her about seven wishes anyway, protesting all the while that none of them ought to be ones that got rid of her adoring fiance.
From besides him, Mikoto giggles, and Fugaku looks down at her. "What's the matter?"
"Don't you think they look good together?" Mikoto smiles. "He knows exactly how to respond to everything she says."
"We look just as good." He pulls a red camellia, I'm in love with you, from a nearby stand and flips a few bills onto the table. "This is for you."
Mikoto's smile turns more genuine as she accepts. "Thank you." She knows the meaning of every flower there is. I cannot surprise her except with my choices. "It's lovely, anata." His own smile grows fond.
My natural romantic. You and me both.
"I don't think you understand, 'Gaku." She sounds distraught.
Kosshi's crashed into his room at an early hour of the morning, and he sits up groggily. "What's the problem?"
"Kaa-san's dead." She rubs a hand over her face, and for the first time, he sees her eyes red rimmed and swollen with shed tears. "I have to take over the clan this afternoon and Tsume is fifteen. What do I know about girls her age?"
"You'll do fine." And she will do fine, her brash, honest ways won the hearts of Inuzukas everywhere. "And you were once fifteen years old too, Kosshi. I'm sure you'll be able to understand your sister."
"She runs around all day with a Nara, a Yamanaka, and a foreigner." Kosshi throws up her hands in despair. "She's not okay and I've never done that before, and Kouga still wants a wedding this spring."
"Don't you want to get married to him?" Sure, she'd always called Kouga an idiot, but she's close to Inuzuka Kouga. Perhaps closer than she is to him.
"Yes." She sighs. "No." She turns around and crosses her arms over her chest. "I have no idea. Kouga's great. He's just." She blows a piece of hair out of her face. "He's just an idiot, you know? And I'll be taking care of him forever. And Kaa-san's dead, and I don't know what to do."
"You do love him then. And believe me, I doubt he's really an idiot." Fugaku carefully pulls on his flak jacket. "Come on, let's go get cheap convenience store dango and you can cry again. Everything will work out fine."
She does bawl her eyes out on his shoulder. And everything after she takes over the clan affairs does, in fact, work out fine.
Kosshi marries Kouga on an unusually crisp May morning, with jasmine blooming all around them, and roses from white to red dripping from every counter at the reception.
The bride and the groom smile so much it seems that their faces must split in half because no human muscle could contain their joy.
"Come in, come in." Kosshi pulls Mikoto into a group of laughing Inuzuka girls. Her own sister, Tsume, is in attendance. "You have to come and see the wedding present Hizashi got me. It's so tacky that even I know it. You'll probably faint on sight. He has no taste, I swear."
Kouga smirks. "Looks like you should come and join the crush, Gaku." He's pulls Fugaku in the direction of a group of Inuzuka men.
It is only then that he realizes that he and Mikoto are the only Uchihas in attendance. In fact, they are the only non-Inuzuka clan members at the wedding.
"Didn't you invite anyone who wasn't a clan member?" He hisses at Kouga as he's dragged through the crowd.
"Not a chance." Kouga sings back and shoves a bowl of sake in his hand. "Drink up. There's no need to be so stiff. It's a wedding not a funeral."
"Would you do me the honor of a dance," Kouga bows dramatically in Mikoto's direction. "Lovely Mikoto?"
"You are a flatterer." Mikoto blushes even so, because now that they're adults, Kouga is...charming. And he had a particularly rugged sort of charm that makes young women swoon.
You are a horrible friend. Fugaku thinks. But at least, like every other Inuzuka I've met in my life, you're horribly honest as well.
Kouga grins. "I know." And he looks at Fugaku-go dance with my wife, you idiot.-over Mikoto's shoulder as they spin across the dance floor.
Fugaku knows not to slight a gift when he receives it. With a nod to the other man, he goes.
Later that year Fugaku, Kouga, and many others are sent to Konoha's border with Kusa. Iwa had been unusually militant in the recent months.
About a month into their border patrol slog, Fugaku wakes to Kouga's dark form sitting in the entrance of their shared tent.
"What are you doing? It's not your guard rotation for camp tonight." In the dim moonlight he makes out a letter.
"Kosshi wrote." Kouga says and he turns around and smiles so hard he might actually break his face. "I'm going to be a father."
They make it home for the birth. A daughter, born first. Kosshi names her Ashi.
A week afterwards, Kosshi's little sister Tsume, who is still only sixteen, elopes with Kaito no Iwa.
"I can't believe her!" A vase smashes against the opposite wall. "Does she not understand that he's what, three years older than her? And a foreigner. A foreigner of all people."
"Kosshi-chan...I know you're angry but smashing vases won't help." Mikoto sets a hand on her shoulder and guides her back to her seat.
Fugaku winces. "I can't imagine that the elders are pleased with this turn of affairs."
"No." Kosshi states, sarcasm dripping from that single word. "She has no idea what lengths I have to go to protect her from them now." She runs a hand through her hair and sighs. "The first thing they suggested was that we take back Kuromaru and strip her of her clan name."
Mikoto gasps. "Surely not." It's a serious thing indeed, to strip a clan member of their name, and that they would suggest it of the clan head's own younger sister is almost unthinkable.
"I'm not as well established as I thought." Kosshi mutters. "I have a daughter a week old who can inherit my position and suddenly it's like my baby sister doesn't even merit a mention anymore."
"You'll show them that it's not acceptable." Mikoto lays a hand on Kosshi's shoulder. "You're strong enough to do it."
Kosshi's grin is dagger sharp and waiting to slide between someone's ribs. "Of course, Mikoto. You'll help me, won't you."
Mikoto's answer is gleeful. "Oh, you know I will."
The rest of them are sent back to the Kusa border. The winter is again, miserably cold.
When they return, Kosshi names her first son, Gaku.
"I thought it fit you know." She says, tracing a finger over those small and chubby cheeks where the red fangs that featured so prominently on every Inuzuka's face are beginning to darken.
"After him, really, darling?" Kouga gestures at Fugaku who's still leaning against the door frame. "Not me? I'm hurt."
The months spent out at the border together had changed the nature of their relationship a little though. No longer are they at odds with one another.
"Please, Kouga. Who'd name their child after you? They'll grow up to be an idiot, just like you." He doesn't know what prompts him to say this, but Kouga's shocked expression is truly worth it.
His booming laughter as soon as he understands what's been said is the most fantastic of it all though. "I knew we'd crack the famous stone man eventually." He claps Fugaku on the back. "You're becoming an actual human being."
Fugaku glares balefully at him. "I was always a human being, Kou."
Two years later, the Kusa border is again a problem.
Again they go.
There are sounds and lights and shinobi wielding Doton Jutsu. The attack on camp had been sudden, brutal and harsh.
"I'm going to go hold them off. You get the hawk off the ground we'll need reinforcements." Kouga clasps his shoulder, and then heads off into the night.
Fugaku follows after him. "You were injured in the last border skirmish. I'm not going to let you go alone."
"Look, just get the hawk for reinforcements going towards Konoha will you?" Kouga opens his mouth to say more, but suddenly his eyes widen and he pushes Fugaku to the right. "Out of the way!'
Kouga's scream as he burns, Fugaku will remember for the rest of his life. His answering Katon lights an entire swath of forest on fire. Out in the darkness of the night, his eyes begin to bleed.
No. He touches his eyes. Mangekyo?
He had not thought that Inuzuka Kouga was his best friend. Had not thought it-but wasn't it true?
Hadn't they done everything together for months on end? Hadn't he seen who Kouga was? Hadn't they actually been friends since he was eight years old, nearly just as long as he'd been friends with Kosshi?
No shinobi from Iwa makes it back alive from that attack. In the still dark, he takes a tanto to each of their faces, and with his eyes still bleeding, he sets all of them aflame. An eye for an eye is not enough.
I want them all dead. He faints before backup arrives to see his massacre.
"I'm sorry." He wants to set a hand on Kosshi's shoulder, but there's something heavy in the air preventing him. "Kouga's body wasn't salvageable after the battle." He burned and oh how he screamed.
"I understand." She folds her hands in her lap, and smiles, polite and completely blank. "I would like to be alone with my children now, Fugaku."
He doesn't feel good leaving her like this, but he does not understand her dead calm. When her mother died she bawled on my shoulder like a small child.
She'd been closer to Kouga that she'd been to her Kaa-san.
And yet it does not seem as though she mourns.
Three steps out the door, he hears her body hit the floor. He races back.
There's blood pooling around her, and the rush to Konoha General passes in slow motion.
"There's not much we could do, Inuzuka-san. You had too much of a shock."
Kosshi blinks up at the nurses by her bedside. "My child?" Her hands reach for her abdomen.
"We're sorry, Inuzuka-san."
She turns her face away and weeps. Her shoulders do not shake.
And Fugaku has no idea what to say. I cannot tell her that I have Mangekyo. I do not want to tell anyone.
I do not want to tell her why he died.
It is Mikoto who rises to comfort her. Fugaku himself slips out into the hall, his throat closing in, choking the breath from his lungs, and the movement from his tongue.
They'd been dancing, but both of them decide that it's time to stop. Kouga is still spinning a laughing Mikoto out on the dance floor, but there's one last thing Fugaku has to give.
"A gift for the bride." He smiles. "A jasmine for grace, heaven knows with Kouga you'll need it." A single jasmine flower made from white gold and porcelain hangs from a silver chain at his fingertips.
She smiles back at him, and takes the silver chain. "Clip it on for me?"
"Of course."
"K-kosshi." He chokes back a gasp at her face. She can't be dead.
But the broken silver chain hanging from his fingertips is proof enough even if he doesn't see the blood. And there is too much blood for him to miss seeing it.
He swallows, his throat suddenly dry and constricting again. What more did you want to take from me Kami-sama? But his eyes do not bleed. They've already bled, and more pain would give him nothing.
He picks up the fallen jasmine charm from where it lay, glittering in the rubble. You caught my eye. Without you, I would not have stopped. It's cracked and as his fingers touch it, it shatters into four pieces. He drops the chain on top of it in the debris, and very carefully picks up Kosshi instead.
When he straightens, it feels like he's carrying the weight of the world.
But she's only a woman. A brazen, proud woman who spoke her mind as often as she could get away with it.
And now she is only a memory.
"A tear is as heavy as the weight of the world and so fragile that could be dried with a kiss or erased by the wind." -Dihaval.
A.N. Uchiha Fugaku, Uchiha Mikoto, and Kosshi really deserved some back story. And this is what my brain decided to spit out. Over four thousand words about Uchiha Fugaku's discovery of his genin teammate's dead body and the memories that ensue.
I literally bawled while writing some parts of this. I swear my mind never creates happy stories, especially one shots. All of them end up dismal, like this piece.
Thanks to Alizay (the Third has never been a favorite character of mine either, but I don't dislike him. I'm selectively neutral.) for reviewing!
~Tavina