The scene of the Uchiha massacre in which a madman in a mask named Tobi had murdered the children and the civilians in the clan while his brother Itachi slew the active shinobi and the conspirators of the coup that failed because it never actually got off the ground faded away to reveal his bedroom and the fact that it was two fifteen in the morning. Though he couldn't see anyone else at the moment, he could feel that he wasn't alone. As he looked around for the source of that feeling, a very familiar woman stepped out of the shadows.
"Mom?" he said, choking back the tears that threatened to fall as he barely held himself in place. He was a ninja. Ninja didn't run crying to their mothers for comfort like a toddler.
"Oh, Sasuke." his mother sighed. "My poor Sasuke."
That did it. Despite the fact that ninja were proud and upright and didn't cry, he ran to his mother, hugging her for the first time in years.
"It shouldn't have come to this. You shouldn't have had the world placed on your shoulders. Because of our foolish actions, actions that nearly destroyed Konoha, you are alone, and it should not have been that way." Uchiha Mikoto said as she held her son, attempting to comfort him.
He didn't know what to say to that. He just found himself gripping his mother even more tightly and dreading the moment he would be forced to let go.
"It doesn't have to always be this way though. There are people all around you that will be there for you if you just let them, people who will understand your pain because they themselves experience pain of their own." Mikoto said as she started to stroke his hair.
As his mother stroked his hair the way she used to when he was little, the room vanished and he found himself inside a rather crappy looking apartment. Seated at a table with only one place setting was his brash, loud-mouthed, prankster, dead-last teammate. The boy wasn't eating the meager meal before him, but was instead studying something intently as if it might hold all of the answers of the universe. When he came around the table and looked over the blond boy's shoulder, he discovered it to be a formal team photograph. It was a photograph of their team, which was rather weird since they weren't scheduled to take that picture until sometime tomorrow afternoon. In the picture the Haruno girl stood in the middle grinning, he stood as he did for all of the formal photographs he had had taken since the Massacre, Uzumaki stood with his arms folded glaring at him, and Hatake Kakashi stood in the back with one hand on his head, and the other on the idiot's. Kakashi was smiling as well, but - even though the mask mostly hid it - it looked more like he was in pain.
The Uzumaki boy then got up from the table, and with a mischievous smile, he grabbed an old permanent marker from a drawer in the kitchen area of his apartment. He then returned to the table and the photograph, still smiling. He uncapped the permanent marker and started moving it towards the picture. When it was half an inch away from the picture, he stopped. The smile vanished as he set the marker aside and started studying the photograph once more.
The scene vanished, and he found himself on a roof facing a rather run down building that he recognized as the one his brother had met Tobi outside of shortly before the Masacre. Through one of the upper windows, he could just barely make out the dead-last's signature orange and blue jumpsuit. Crouched to his left was his new sensei who was barely bothering to pretend to read the book in his hand. After what seemed like hours, Uzumaki got up from the table and vanished for several minutes. He reappeared wearing ratty pajamas and a totally ridiculous cap that looked like it was trying to eat his head. The blond boy set something on top of his dresser before crawling into bed.
After half an eternity, Hatake Kakashi moved from his crouched position, leapt across the distance that separated the two buildings, landed on the roof of the other building, and vanished through a door. A minute later, he reappeared in the Uzumaki's apartment. After carefully making his way across the floor, he picked up the item the boy had set on the dresser earlier, turned it over, and drew something on the back of it. There was a brief flash after he finished drawing and touched his finger to whatever he had drawn. Once the last of the light vanished, he set the object back on the dresser. He then moved towards the bed where he appeared to be checking on the blanket for some strange reason. Apparently satisfied, he rather gently tucked the sleeping blond in before ruffling his hair and leaving, presumably the way he came.
Soon Sasuke found his mother and himself following his new sensei to a small apartment across town where the Hatake set a newly framed photo of Team 7 down next to one that depicted the Fourth Hokage in the standard Jounin uniform standing behind a trio of children. The positions they were in gave him the chills the instant he saw the photographs side by side. The girl was in the center grinning much like that annoying fangirl he'd been saddled with, the dark haired boy who looked like a slightly younger version of the ghost who introduced himself as Uchiha Obito was to the left, while the light haired boy whom he assumed to be Kakashi himself was to the right. Unlike himself and the Uzumaki however, the Uchiha in this photo was smiling and the other boy seemed unhappy with the world at large rather than just his teammate. The Hokage was in the same position Kakashi was in theirs though.
Kakashi then picked up the older photograph and sat down on his bed, holding it.
"Minato-sensei." Kakashi sighed. "You should be here to see him. He's just as wild as his mother and as idealistic as Obito."
After staring at the photograph for a while, Kakashi set it back in its former place and picked up an older one in a dusty frame of a silver haired man who was proudly carrying a laughing toddler on his shoulders...
The scene vanished, and he found himself in a well ordered home which looked to be a civilian residence judging by the lack of weapons laying about as they had once done in his own home. The pink haired annoyance that had been placed on his team came in, and he found himself following her to a dining room where a red haired man and a white haired woman were seated at a table. A meal was already laid out, and from the looks of things it appeared to be carry-out rather than home cooked.
"Mom! We had our first mission today. It totally sucked. Naruto ruined everything." the pink haired girl said excitedly as she sat down, apparently preparing to launch into a long story on exactly how the Uzumaki had ruined their first mission.
"That's nice dear." the white haired woman said vaguely. The woman who bore a strong resemblance to his teammate was neatly dressed, and impeccably groomed and seemed to fit the home like a glove, but there was something about the woman's eyes that made her look as if she wasn't entirely there.
The red haired man looked over at his female teammate and shook his head slightly. The girl stopped her story mid-sentence.
"Another bad day, huh?" the girl said.
"Yes." the man sighed.
The scene vanished once more, and he found himself standing in the bedroom of another home. Yamanaka Inoichi was tending to a woman on a futon while the blonde annoyance Ino quietly watched from the doorway. Eventually, after the woman appeared to be settled, Inoichi left. The blonde annoyance followed. The Yamanaka man made his way to a bar where a Nara and an Akimichi already occupied a table. As the man moved to be seated, the blonde annoyance briefly presented her headband to the bouncer by the door before finding a table of her own. Oddly enough, he found his attention being drawn towards the three men, rather than the blonde annoyance.
"Again, huh?" the Nara said as soon as the Yamanaka received his drink which appeared to have a significantly higher alcohol content than those in front of his companions.
"Yes." the Yamanaka said sadly.
"Don't worry, if you keep trying you'll get your boy." the Akimichi said sympathetically.
"I don't think I can. This last one nearly killed her, and to be honest I can barely hold myself together each time it happens. Maybe I should just give up and accept the fact that the family I wanted will never happen." the Yamanaka said before taking a gulp of his drink.
As the scene vanished, he caught sight of the blonde annoyance. There was an expression on her face as she received the one drink that Genin were allowed that he'd never seen before, and didn't like.
He soon found himself in an unfamiliar room, and seated on a futon across from him was that stuck up ass Neji. Neji was holding something and staring at it intently. It was yet another photograph. Coming around for a look, he saw that it was of a man that looked just like the head of the Hyuuga clan who was resting on top of the wall that separated the Hyuuga compound from the rest of the village. There was a small child curled up on his chest fast asleep and drooling on his shirt which looked to be a souvenir tee from Iwa of all places. One of his older cousins used to have one just like it which he picked up sometime during the Third Shinobi War. There had been some sort of story behind it about some stupid tradition started in the Second War that had something to do with Rain Country and a paperweight which he'd mostly forgotten.
Seeing as the head of the Hyuuga would never be caught dead in a T-shirt - even if it was some bizarre war trophy - he guessed that the man was Neji's father. He vaguely remembered hearing something about the man being dead, but he wasn't entirely certain.
The scene shifted and he found himself watching as a strange looking boy in green spandex pummelled a training post, determinedly ignoring the group of jeering teenagers that surrounded him. From the way the boy's shoulders were tensed, he was only barely refraining from pummeling the boys instead of the post.
The scene shifted again and he found himself watching a girl with her hair in buns who sat polishing her weapons in a home that was completely empty aside from her.
The scene shifted and he watched as the Hyuuga heiress turned away from her training to look at her father who stood nearby only for him to scowl slightly and turn away. As the man walked off in silence, the girl drew in on herself.
The scene shifted again, and he found himself in a forest. Three shinobi wearing forehead protectors that identified them as being from Kirigakure sat talking in the middle of a makeshift camp. A short distance away, a person that was either an exceedingly feminine boy like a few of his more unfortunate cousins who had been forced to violently refuse certain unwanted advances on multiple occasions or a girl dressed as a boy was feeding a bird.
"Do you have someone precious to you? Someone you wish to protect?" the boy? girl? asked. He? She? was talking to the bird, but it felt as if he? she? was talking to him.
The scene vanished and he found himself looking over the shoulder of a long haired person in a black cloak with red clouds. Clutched in a hand that was rather familiar despite the painted nails was a photograph of him and That Man in a pond splashing each-other. He remembered that day. It had been one of His rare days off, and their mother had taken them on a rather rare picnic. Their father hadn't gone with them because he'd been busy.
"Sasuke." the person he was standing behind sighed.
The person jerked slightly, and an instant later the photograph vanished into a hidden pocket inside the cloak. A blue skinned man who looked to be part shark arrived half a second after the photograph disappeared.
"Ready to go Itachi?" the blue man asked.
The world vanished once more, and instead of finding himself looking at either someone else or his bedroom, he found that he was in a formless gray void, and that his mother who had been by his side was now gone. As he was contemplating his surroundings a figure in a black cloak appeared out of nowhere.
Edited 12-25-12