Chapter 11: A slight oversight

Azure eyes considered the object in her hand carefully before taking a glance at the basket hanging from her arm. It wasn't what she'd planned on buying, but then again, it had been a while since they had some proper meat, and Sasuke's patience for any sort of broth was one bowl away from setting fire to Ichiraku's.

Decision made about their change of menu for the day, the girl nodded to herself. As much as Sasuke would adamantly refuse to admit to it, he'd been less strict about denying the blond his ramen addiction this past week. He'd also been more persistent in passing as much time as possible within the compound, being around others had quickly become harder for them both. The same people Naruto was willing to protect were the ones who failed to see the boy was more a victim than an enemy. It was nothing less than disgusting how the people seemed so happy with their hatred that they missed how much they hurt an innocent victim.

Shaking her head to clear her thoughts; her gaze fell on a familiar light purple jacket. Hyuuga Hinata was browsing the vegetable aisle with a mostly full basket in her hands.

Back before the incident, Kagome had tried to form a friendship with the shy girl. She'd been one of her only female classmates who didn't shriek to gain Sasuke's attention nor loudly insulted Naruto, so trying to get along was just common sense. As far as she could remember, she did make some headway into getting the introverted girl to speak her mind more openly, at least when it was just the two of them. Up until that night, of course. The Higurashi winced as she recalled the freezing smile and overly cordial words she spoke while taking the offered flowers, and all but told Hinata to not bother them again. Being an heiress from a prestigious clan meant the lavender-eyed girl managed to hear the real meaning behind her polite wording and had since kept her distance from them. Thinking back, it must've taken the shy Hyuuga a lot of courage to enter the Uchiha district in what had to be, complete defiance of her father's orders.

Yes, Kagome had been grieving, and her opinion of most of the people who went to knock on their door with fake sympathy and greedy eyes remained unchanged, was worse now that she knew about the Kyuubi. But she probably shouldn't have dumped the nervous and shy girl with the rest of them.

Asking for Hinata to show the same level of optimism and perseverance Naruto showed back then was borderline cruel.

"Do you like cooking?" It was as good a question as any to try and start the conversation.

The lettuce in her former classmate's hands almost fell from the jump the girl did. Right, she'd forgotten that for all that her bloodline allowed her to literally see behind her, Hinata was surprisingly easy to catch off-guard.

"Ka-Kagome-chan...I..." the shy heiress trailed off, cheeks reddening in embarrassment.

"I hadn't seen you here before," she smiled, making sure her expression was soft and calming.

"Oh...umm, I-I p-picked it up recently..." Hinata managed to stammer out. "I-I didn't know you were back."

Kagome hummed thoughtfully before adding some lettuce to her own basket. Hinata was one of the only persons she knew that actually showed a genuine interest in the prankster (or more like, the only one who felt real concern, since the Hyuuga was too shy to actually show it). And right now, the blond could probably use the reminder that Sasuke and herself were not the only exceptions to the rule, that others could care for him as well.

"We got back earlier," she said, letting her intuition decide her actions. "Naruto-kun went a bit overboard with the clones, and well, with the forest covered in orange, it wasn't that hard to find the merchant's crate...say Hinata-chan...are you doing anything this afternoon?"

"Oh? N-not that I remember."

"Really? Then would you..." she trailed off, before shaking her head. "No, forget it, it's foolish."

"W-What is it?" Hinata asked in an ironically reassuring tone.

"Well, it's just, I was wondering...since you enjoy cooking if you'd be willing to help me prepare dinner today?" Her voice was just a bit shaky, her hands went to consciously play with the edge of her sleeve. "Naruto-kun is coming over, you see, and considering he went overboard, that probably means I'll have to spend hours in the kitchen. By finishing early, we ended up coming back in time for my turn to cook.

"But that wouldn't be fair, we haven't spoken for months now. Me just asking you for help like this, out of nowhere...I'm probably just bothering you."

It was emotional manipulation at its finest, it really wasn't fair, but right now, her childhood friend could use a few more friendly faces around him. Plus, she could use a reminder that not everyone in this village was the kind of judgemental idiots who were happy feeling superior and harassing the person who was made into a sacrifice for their sake.

"N-no!" The loudness of her denial took her by surprise, the heiress was really flustered, it seemed. "N-not at all."

"Really? You don't mind helping me?"

"R-really."

"I'm so glad! You'll stay for dinner, of course, it would be rude to ask for your aid and not even offer the food you helped prepare." Kagome gave her a hopeful smile, with just a bit of uncertainty on the side.

"A-ah...u-ummm...I..."

"Come on, let's pay for this."

Careful not to use much pressure, Kagome took the other girl's hand on her own, pulling her along to the cashier. She had to be careful not to be too pushy or risk Hinata passing out from pure nervousness, it wouldn't be the first time it happened either.

Still, her fingers remained entwined with hers as she walked them both out of the store, azure eyes brightening at the sight of the familiar form already waiting for her.

"Sasuke." The usual tension that invaded her when they separated lifted at once.

"Kagome," The boy lifted a brow, a question in his eyes as he looked to her side. "Hyuuga."

"Sa-Sasuke-san."

"I ran into her inside, Hinata-chan agreed to help me with dinner," she offered as an answer to his unspoken question, trusting him to see there was more beneath her words.

"Do what you want," he sighed.

With a smile, the girl began to walk, her right hand still holding the Hyuuga's, unwilling to give the other girl a chance for her fears and anxieties to stop her halfway through. She'd never been more thankful for Mikoto-sama's diplomacy classes as Kagome made sure to keep a light conversation going. Even when the familiar unnerving silence of the Uchiha district enveloped their small group.

She could see the other girl's discomfort slowly ebb away once they began cooking, for all her nervousness, it looked like Hinata could handle herself around the kitchen. After a couple of reassurances that the food was coming out alright and Sasuke keeping silent as he read a scroll in the counter, the Hyuuga heiress had managed to relax by the time Naruto arrived.

The look of surprise and eventual confidence in having the shy girl looking at him (or at his general direction) with the same sincerity she looked at anyone else, was well worth Kagome's continuous efforts to keep the girl from retreating into her insecurities or just passing out from being too flustered.

It was actually kind of cute, watching Hinata blush like mad at Naruto's honest compliments for her cooking.

"Oh yeah, Kagome-chan, did you find that thing?" the blond asked between bites.

Frowning slightly, the girl gave a resigned shake of her head.

After a week of trying their best to try and figure out how her techniques worked, they'd found...mixed results. On the one hand, she was producing results, the jutsus she'd picked to learn were working...to a degree. On the other hand, well, she was having far more troubles with them than the ones she learned before. Kakashi-sensei had been as incapable as her to understand how exactly her reiki worked when compared to chakra. The texts she'd taken with her didn't bother to explain that little detail, and none of the other scrolls kept inside their bedroom had anything either. Technically she didn't need the extra scrolls, but without them, it would be like trying to swim upstream against the current.

There was still one place she could potentially look, it wasn't one she had any desire to go to, though. The ruins of the Higurashi compound had never had any appeal to its only survivor.

"I already checked all I have here, but there's nothing about the basic theory. I'm guessing those were probably some of the older ones, the only ones we have here look relatively new." At this rate, she'd have to ask permission to go out of the gates and look through the rubble.

"Y-you should have them..."

"What do you mean?" Her gaze snapped to the Hyuuga heiress.

"W-well, a Higurashi married into the U-Uchiha-clan, r-right?" What little confidence she'd managed to gain suddenly vanished by becoming the center of attention.

"Before the village was founded, yes." That was one of the arguments Fugaku-sama used to gain guardianship.

"Eh? So you and the bastard are related?" the blond asked.

"Distantly," she waved off his surprise. "I'm pretty sure if you go back far enough, most of the clans are related in some way or another." Before the idea of keeping the bloodlines pure segregated them.

"What's the point of this?" Finally, Sasuke snapped, he'd kept silent for most of the night. He was well aware the Hyuuga heiress got more nervous around him, whether it was because she thought him intimidating or because his presence reminded her she was probably disobeying orders Kagome wasn't sure.

"U-ummm...it's just...if it was b-before Konoha was founded...t-then it was tradition to b-bring at least a couple of scrolls when m-marrying into a different clan." Hinata was no longer looking at any of them, her lavender eyes looking down as she fidgeted with her fingers. "D-do the Uchiha archives go back t-that long?"

"I think so." Sasuke's voice was quieter this time.

"T-then if your library uses the same storing f-format as ours, you can use t-the date on the m-marriage contracts as a g-guide...p-probably."

"That's great Hinata-chan, you're a genius!"

Oh, she wasn't under the delusion she could avoid her clan's former home forever. There was enough in the texts she did have to figure out there was likely far more to the Higurashi ruins than what her past guardian managed to see. Even the sharingan couldn't uncover the secrets behind anything made with reiki. If she could postpone it as much as she could tough, she'd take it. Blood or no blood, the Uchiha district was her home; she had no desire to see dilapidated buildings she couldn't remember ever living in.

Maybe waiting another couple of hours before coming to the old archives would've been a smarter choice.

Forcing herself to keep moving, Kagome ignored the usual feelings of anxiety that threatened to swallow her whenever she happened to be alone in any sort of empty, dark, and narrow place. The urge to go running back home was also entirely ignored.

Waiting would've been nothing more than a waste of time, she could just look for the marriage contract and check the date while Sasuke took care of lunch, and then go together to the library after eating. There was absolutely no point in having him here when she could do this on her own, and save them both needless effort. She wasn't a child anymore, and Sasuke was in the main house, less than five minutes away from this building, and there was no reason at all for her to be scared. She had a light, she knew the way out, she could see the walls and the furniture around her, and she could go back out into the street at any time. She could do this without bothering anyone.

Besides, this would be quick, just check the dates in the family archives, find her clan's name and make a note to make sure there was no need to come back here.

Closing her eyes for a moment to attempt and regain some semblance of composure, the girl lifted the lamp she'd been carrying as she pulled out the first cabinet. The building that housed the Uchiha clan archives was not one of the few ones they bothered to check or clean on any regular basis. Like most of the other places, it fell into disrepair, the scent of mold and dust permeated the air, and the floor creaked as she moved. The further back she went into the building, the worse it got, there was no helping it though, the archives were organized by date, and the older papers were always sent to the basement. If not for Hinata's comments two days ago, there was no way Kagome would've willingly gone into the building.

Old traditions, from before the village was founded, was not something taught at school, and her lessons with the deceased Uchiha matriarch never got that far. She'd honestly had no idea there could still be information about her blood family within the district. Her impulsive decision to talk to the Hyuuga heiress had paid off in a manner not even Sasuke could complain about.

The issue of whether any sort of affection or even willingness was involved in her ancestor's marriage was one she was expertly ignoring.

Not much was really known about the Higurashi clan apart from their involvement with the creation of Konoha. And of course, the fact that their bloodline was compatible with others in a very unique way. Which was why her clan had been constantly hunted by greedy families who wanted to boost their own kekkei genkais. Up until she was discovered in the outskirts of the village, the official story had been that the Higurashi clan went extinct due their unwillingness to fight their hunters, who launched an attack against them on the newly created Konoha. Considering the dates she was working with, Kagome was pretty sure leaving the small little detail of consent out of her mind was probably the wiser move here. Besides, whatever happened to someone she never knew decades ago wasn't her problem.

Continuing opening cabinets at random, she let her strained gaze travel from date to date. She was in the right section alright, but looking for her name was going to take some impressive patience.

Twenty minutes in, a familiar string of kanjis finally caught her eyes in a scroll within one of the higher cabinets. Kagome stepped on her toes, straining to get the scroll out, there were no chairs or tables this far into the archives, and she refused to go back all the way to the entrance just for a ladder. Giving a small jump, the girl shrieked as the end of the parchment got caught on something else within the drawer and pulled the whole thing out and onto her.

Right, next time I'll just go for the ladder.

A groan left her as she saw the mess around her. Some of the scrolls had opened and rolled over a bunch of...papers? Actual pages?

That was...weird. Notebooks like this weren't used that long ago...were they?

Curiosity fueling her actions the girl knelt down and placed down her lamp as she opened the one nearest to her. Azure orbs moved over the kanjis explaining the export of rice, just as she was about to close the thing and put everything back, dismissing it all as either a mistake or some sort prank to mess with whoever had been in charge of the archives, her gaze found it.

A small mark next to a kanji that wasn't supposed to be there.

She recognized it.

Of course she did.

The blood of the Uchiha may not flow through her veins, but she was still the family's ward. She was expected to represent this clan as much as her own, learning the unique code only clan members were approved to use had been required from her since her early childhood.

Confusion took over as she knelt closer to her only source of light. Getting a better look at the words, the girl flipped the notebook back to the first page. It had been years since the last time she used or encountered the code, but the memory of what she'd learned so long ago was still in her head.

Dread began to pool inside her with each page she managed to decode. Slowly, one certainty was cementing for her, placing this so far into the archives was not a mistake nor a form of petty harassment.

Not caring where it fell, the girl discarded the notebook and hurried to open another.

The same small inconspicuous dots most would mistake for poor calligraphy or ink stains painfully clear to her from the very first page. This time she didn't make it to the end before Kagome was flinging it and reaching for another. It didn't make sense, what she was reading right now just did not...

She blinked slowly.

The third notebook was one she couldn't read, her eyes passing what she knew to be a code but was incapable of deciphering. Not surprising, really, considering it was designed to be read only by those who possessed the sharingan.

Panic seeped into her.

This was serious.

This was no mistake nor joke.

She knew the rules of the clan like the back of her hand. She remembered the regulations and when things were supposed to be used, or not. No one in the clan would dare to code this in such a highly classified manner if it wasn't important.

Falling to the ground, the girl grabbed another, and another.

Frenzied eyes rushed from one page to another, her hands moving on their own to bring more damning evidence before her. Words her mind refused to acknowledge danced before her eyes. Lists with names and statuses right next to them, the status of the armory, promotions, demotions, and the implications were so loud she couldn't block them out. Because this meant, it meant...

A sheet of paper crumbled under her knee, right, there had been individual pages too.

Bringing it closer to the light only made the ice seeping into her veins to run colder.

"...Shisui-nii..."

Pushing back her fear, or perhaps forced by it, her body continued moving. Refusing to stop even when her own name appeared coded under a list of future assets.

Because she'd known.

Fugaku-sama was not the kind of person who'd help others out of the goodness of his heart. She'd always been meant to be an asset. Something to raise the status of the Uchiha. She'd known, and she hadn't cared because...because there had been two persons who just saw Kagome instead of the Higurashi survivor. It was fine if she was used as a tool for their sake, so she didn't care, so she refused to stop as she went through notebooks, and notebooks and individual dossiers desperately searching for the slightest sign that this wasn't true. She had to be reading this wrong, her memories were faulty because this just couldn't have happened...because then...then she might finally have an answer to the one question that had tormented her for so long...and yet...

No.

It couldn't be.

Could it?

But if it was...if it was then his reason was...

Kagome froze.

Her gaze chained on one of the pages that had fallen apart thanks to her silly, innocent, little mistake. There, on the top of the page, in code was one painfully familiar name. One she'd never misread.

Uchiha Itachi.

She was taking longer than he'd estimated.

Sasuke ignored the thought, as he pointedly refused to look back at the front door, chopsticks fiddling around in his miso while he reminded himself there was no one else besides them in the whole compound. Kagome was fine.

Though she was supposed to get back here before an hour passed.

She probably ended up too focused on trying to find the stupid scroll and lost track of time. Knowing her, she grew frustrated at not finding the idiotic thing and grew overly determined against the idea of coming out of there with empty hands only to go back later.

Then again, she hated the archives, the place was too dark and gave her anxiety.

Maybe she found it fast enough and decided to give the library a try. By now, she could be too absorbed with whatever theory was inside, that she simply forgot how long she'd been reading for. Her mind fully occupied by trying to understand the abilities her bloodline gave her.

Except she'd never done that, not even as children.

She wasn't weak, even if someone had somehow managed to infiltrate the compound, there was no chance she wouldn't be able to make some sort of noise if she was being attacked. And the silence surrounding both him and the house had been unperturbed ever since she left.

Unless, of course, her anxieties had allowed her to be taken off guard.

With a loud groan, the boy stood up, his chopsticks clanking noisily in the silent afternoon as he made his way to the front door. He did not spend so much time cooking for the food to grow cold. It was for that reason and nothing else that he was hurriedly making his way to the archives.

The Uchiha's main house was strategically located close to any building the head of the clan could need to get at a moment's notice. For the head of the police force, that meant a fair amount of administrative buildings were around their home, at least, that meant he reached the place fast enough.

Dust welcomed him into the building, his nose wrinkled in an attempt not to breathe it in. Maybe they should've paid this place a bit more of attention. As children, they'd had no use in looking through piles of documents, but there was no doubt in his mind that there was important information here that could prove valuable later on. Even within the village, there were probably quite a good number of people who'd delight in getting their hands on this. It was only the fact that Sasuke was still breathing, and therefore the clan wasn't quite extinct yet that these papers were still in their proper place.

His gaze stopped on the mark left behind by the lamp Kagome must've taken with her for just a second before he grabbed his own from behind the counter.

Pausing for an instant as he crossed the open door to the rooms and halls that kept all the important documentation, he frowned. He wasn't about to complain about having the Hyuuga girl for dinner. Especially since not only did it keep Kagome happy but also gave them a chance to avoid having to go to the ruins of another deserted compound, but being forced to admit he didn't know for sure how these things were arranged was a bitter thing to do. It was a reminder that while Kagome had been taught how to handle clan issues because they all expected her to take over a political seat, Sasuke hadn't been taught a thing. It was only natural, back then he wasn't even considered as the heir, there was no need for him to know these kinds of things.

Pushing those thoughts to the back of his mind, the Uchiha entered the room. If their archives were arranged like the Hyuuga's, and he reluctantly admitted it was highly likely taking into account both families were old and traditional, then the oldest files were saved in a basement with stairs located at the far end of the room.

Kagome hated dark and closed spaces.

Anxiety threatened to swallow him with every step he took. She hated places like this, ever since that night, the girl could barely keep calm on the back of the Uchiha library, even while squeezing his hand so hard it left bruises. The silence mixed with the darkness of narrow halls or rooms could trigger flashbacks if she wasn't careful. She'd never be able to relax enough to lose herself in some research in here, and yet, the open hatch was proof the girl was still inside the archive's basement.

At least, he figured, the darkness enveloping the place made it easier to spot the weak shine of Kagome's lamp. It was half-hidden by all the cabinets, but he could still see the light on one of the corners.

His tension didn't quite vanish though, there was something wrong here, something keeping the girl in the kind of room she'd usually race to get out of, and Sasuke couldn't stop his feet from walking perhaps a bit too fast.

He heard the sound of rustling papers and dull thumps before he turned the corner. It wasn't enough of a warning as his eyes finally caught sight of the girl.

Kneeling on the floor, with her long hair covering her face; Kagome's movements were frantic as she went from one notebook to another, grabbing and discarding random pages with her left hand while her right clutched a single sheet of paper so hard he could make out the whiteness on her knuckles, even in the weak lightning.

"Kagome..." he called out, concern lacing his voice because this was not normal.

"S-Sasuke...I...I didn't know...i-it just fell and..."

She looked up, desperation in her eyes as her attention finally left the mess of papers, tears fell from her cheeks as she looked at him with a broken plea.

His lamp almost crashed against the floor in his haste to reach her, to cross the few steps separating them. He'd seen her look like this before, he'd been so fucking used to it years ago, when she'd grabbed on to him, clawing at the nurses that tried to get her to go back to her dark-room for the night. The raw desperation of feeling alone was so fucking familiar.

Kneeling, he reached to hold her, only to be stopped by a notebook suddenly shoved in front of his face. The one she'd been reading before he called out to her.

Barely resisting the urge to ignore the thing and drag her out of this forsaken place, the Uchiha took the offered text.

Confused eyes read over the pages of completely useless information until the memory of sitting in their living room as they practiced and traced a specific code came back to him. The unique code any Uchiha expected to pursue a shinobi career needed to learn. He and Kagome had never really had any reason for using it when it was only the two of them, but he'd learned it well enough to remember it even now.

He read through the pages once more, and then twice, and then he flipped the pages all the way to the beginning as he started to panic. Searching through his memories for the ones that would tell him he was being foolish, that he was mistaking the characters and there was just a slight trace, an easy to miss dot that would completely change the meaning of what he was reading and re-reading, he found nothing. There was no such memory, he knew that, but he had to keep looking for it because otherwise...this just didn't make sense.

Right when he was about to fling this...this report that had to be fake, another notebook was placed in front of him.

"You can...read this..." Her voice was calming down, but it wasn't a calm he was used to. "...can't you?"

His hand moved without permission, swapping the journals in a second and opening the new one.

This time, however, he stopped before flipping even the first place because...he couldn't read it...the girl's words came back to him as a dreadful realization had him sending chakra to his eyes. The sharingan activated with ease. And with ease, it read through the code made to be understood only by the Uchiha.

It was a small miracle the pages weren't ripped, as he made his way through the notebook with a need he never thought possible. Disbelief and confusion battling for control as his mind struggled to come to terms with what he was reading because this...this was crazy, senseless

It was complete and utter madness...

He looked up to see yet another sheet of paper in front of his face, one last offering from the girl kneeling next to him. The page she'd been clutching when he'd found her was crumbled and shaking between her fingers as she silently insisted on having him read its contents.

It wasn't that bad.

It really wasn't, especially when compared to the other two journals full of reports he'd read already, and yet his heart still stopped while he easily decoded the first two small lines.

Uchiha Itachi.

Status: Unreliable.

Letting go of the page, almost like it had burned him, the boy looked around the room, around the mess of scrolls and notebooks and reports and for once he didn't care for the clear attachment showed in the way Kagome picked back the discarded profile.

Shaking hands moved to grab another piece of paper lying around, and then another. Crimson eyes going through the notes faster than should be possible as he went through damning report after damning report.

It was there, it was all there.

List of available assets, lists of accessible weapons, blueprints for the entire village, for the Hokage tower, individual reports on active members of the clan, orders for far more weaponry than should be necessary in times of peace. His father's signature under over half of these documents and the signatures of the elders under the rest.

Everything coded.

Everything hidden.

The Uchiha were given the role of the Military Police Force because there was no one else strong or worthy enough to protect the peace within the village. How many times had he heard that before?

A loud hysterical sound filled his ears, it took him a moment to realize he was the one laughing. A soft whimper broke his laughter, and he turned to see her, Kagome, apparently the only thing that was true in his life.

"They were planning a coup." He wasn't sure who he was telling this to, it didn't matter. "Protecting the peace? They were planning to kill anyone who got in their fucking way! All of them!"

"Say...do you remember?" Her voice was so soft when compared to his own, he could barely hear her. "A couple of weeks before that...Itachi was fighting with him."

His still crimson eyes snapped to the one page she refused to let go. Uchiha Itachi, unreliable.

Unreliable.

That one word threatened to open the gates of a story he wasn't sure he wanted to know. One Kagome had been looking for years.

It suddenly made more sense, didn't it? He could already see parts of it with just the superficial reading he'd done. His family had been organizing a coup d'etat, they were planning to overthrow the government and place themselves as the rulers. Of course, the one vital piece in this plan had to be the one person lauded as the greatest prodigy the clan had ever produced. With the support of said genius the plan would be almost guaranteed to succeed and yet...

Unreliable.

"Where was this?" He wasn't shouting anymore, but there was still some shakiness to his voice.

"Inside the cabinet that had the scroll I was looking for." Now that he listened to her he could hear it, or rather he couldn't hear it. For the first time in his life, he could hear nothing in her voice, it was void of emotions as she spoke. "I pulled it out by accident...it fell."

"Have you read through all this?"

"Somewhat," she continued, unnaturally calm. "there are more I can't read.

There are more irrefutably incriminating ones then.

"Think this is all?

"Probably not...Fugaku-sama was always overly cautious."

Crimson locked onto azure. Perhaps, if they put everything back to where it was and took only the Higurashi scroll, they could pretend nothing had happened. Go back to their daily lives, go back to doing as his brother asked and hate him. Maybe they could forget it all, think of it as a bad dream and ignore it all...

He knew they were standing on the edge of an abyss, the dread in his stomach had only grown with every word he deciphered. If they kept going there was no way they could go back to their normal lives...

No...

There was no choice, there never was one to begin with...he couldn't turn back. They couldn't turn back.

Dark lamps littered the ground around them, some half covered by discarded scrolls or unimportant records. His hands stopped shaking hours ago, or had it been a few minutes? Sasuke wasn't entirely sure anymore. Word after word a picture was painted with the cruelty of something that couldn't be denied, and with the two of them placing the tattered pieces back together, there were at least a couple of things they were absolutely certain of.

"I want them dead."

Her words were soft, barely audible even in the silence of the room. Her tears had dried off long ago while they worked on separating the useful information from the actual family archives. Her panic and confusion had vanished alongside them, leaving behind only a cold feeling Sasuke had only seen once in his life. In the eyes of his brother as he entered the Uchiha compound, a sobbing Kagome in his arms and blood staining them both.

Hatred.

Cold and pure and raw, hatred.

It was hatred that laced her every word as her anger froze into something sharp and dangerously calm. Her movements morphing from frantic to almost graceful while they worked on the timeline, his own rage seared under his skin, boiling a bit more with every new fact.

He'd lost track of time, other than going back upstairs to grab all the lamps none of them had set foot outside the room, intent on scouring each and every cabinet. Official files painfully separated from the unofficial records, those then sorted according to their importance and date. The beginning part of the story was clear.

His clan, his parents, had been preparing to start a civil war, dates and details of the many Uchiha shinobi who were either unfairly demoted, or whose disappearances and deaths weren't taken seriously enough by the village were all recorded within the coded notebooks now sitting on his right. The passing of laws that limited their movements and demanded more and more money and work from them had been placed on a bunch by his left.

They were accurate.

He could vaguely remember his father having to deal with complaints from others, be it fellow shinobi or families who'd lost their children. The village had pushed his clan around, needling, and testing its limits until they broke. Until they stopped caring for the people who failed to care back and decided to take their fate into their own hands...by betraying everyone else, uncaring of the rivers of blood that would flood the streets should their plan succeed. It was ironic, really, that it was them who were murdered by the one person who was the key to their successful coup. The one asset deemed as 'unreliable', as he conveniently lost his mind in a mad search for power.

Funny how Itachi had never given any signs before that.

Funny how no shinobi patrolling the area or ANBU making rounds noticed what had to be a loud massacre and decided to investigate. Or how no one managed to make it out of the compound alive to ask for help when their prodigy went insane.

Itachi was a pacifist, that was something Kagome had screamed at him the one time they tried to talk about the incident. The one time she'd tried and failed to make him see that there was something off about this whole thing, she'd begged him to think back because Itachi was a pacifist and there had to be a reason behind his actions. Because Itachi loved them, loved both of them, and saw them in a way no one else did. If he went so far then something really important had to have motivated him.

Like stopping the hundred of deaths that would occur if his family had managed to go ahead with their plans for treason. Corpses would've adorned the streets for years just for trying to defend their stolen position. Even if the Hokage could stop them, Konoha would've been seen as weak and unstable. The perfect time for other countries to rise up and begin another war.

If the whole clan were to disappear though...

If it was done before the plan could be put into action, then the village would keep its perfect image in front of the rest of the world. There would be no reason to feel alarmed...

And with no survivors, not even the elderly or toddlers, there would be no reason to fear for retaliation in the future.

Except there was a survivor.

Sasuke was still alive.

Was he left alive for the sake of letting the village retain the sharingan? Or perhaps...

Was Itachi unable to take his life like he'd done the rest of their clan?

For the first time in years, Sasuke thought about his brother, pushing away his hatred. The words Kagome had insisted on repeating to him that day were suddenly impossible to dismiss.

Because if Uchiha Itachi had found out about the coup, had failed in convincing his father to stop his madness then...would his first move be to commit a massacre?

No.

That wasn't his brother.

He'd have gone straight to the Hokage, he would've reported the treason and given their leader the power to make the decision and then...then he'd follow the orders they gave him.

What better way to get rid of treason than to make it look like someone simply snapped and took it out on his own clan?

He resisted the urge to laugh again, it seemed in the end, his brother had really played him for a fool.

"All the ones who were behind this...I want them dead." Kagome's voice was sharp as she repeated the same treasonous words. Sasuke glanced to one of the piles, the one that contained a draft for a marriage contract between the then Uchiha heir and the lone Higurashi survivor, had she seen it before he arrived? Would she have been happy with that? Was that fueling the icy hatred that turned her voice to a knife? Did it even matter? "They used him and then threw him away...he saved them but they wouldn't hesitate a second to cut off his head if they thought it would be more convenient, if they could gain the fame of killing the insane Uchiha prodigy."

"They will burn," he answered, because it didn't matter what that future could've meant, because Itachi had been sacrificed just like Naruto had been and right now the only thing Sasuke wanted was to see the village crumble. Because he had loved them. "They will all burn."

"We need to find him." It almost sounded like saying the words hurt her. "Before we do anything we need to find him."

Crimson met azure, he could see the cold determination in those frozen pools of blue. She was right, there was still too much they didn't know, things they needed to know. As much as he hated the idea of going out of here and work for the same people who had probably used his brother without any regard for the teen's life, he wouldn't lie to himself.

Not with Kagome needing him to rely on.

"We can't leave the village yet," he conceded. "They'll want to recover the sharingan, and be downright desperate to get back your reiki. We'll be hunted down the second we leave."

And they still weren't strong enough to keep themselves out of danger. Leaving now would mean having to fight off hunter nins, the mission in Wave served as a reminder of how far their skill truly was. They'd survived, but just barely.

"We'll take our time then. We still need more information...I want the decision-makers to regret being alive."

A/N: So here it is, the secrets are coming out, this was actually the first scene that came to mind when writing this.

As for Kagome's reaction, well, first of all she wasn't raised with the idea that everyone deserve forgiveness even the ones that hurts those you love (and seriously in cannon she's way too forgiving, literally all her friends in the feudal era have tried to kill/kidnap/attack/ or steal from her), she'd fiercely protective of her loved ones. From the beginning she never cared much for the village and her tolerance was already wearing thin when she learned about the Kyuubi, add her (mostly right) suspicions about what happened with the massacre and...yeah she's not so forgiving anymore.

Also, since he's responsible for someone else's well being Sasuke is being more careful and less impulsive here. One mistake will end up with more than just him hurt.

Like always thank you so much for reading and for any comment/review/constructive criticism

To sidtrix: thank you so much for such a kind review, like you I think Itachi deserved so much more than what he got, it was honestly just unfair. As for how Naruto and the rest are going to get affected by this changes, well like I said, things are going to start changing from here on