I was trying to write Sakura. Really! She was just being difficult, so I ended up giving Sasuke a tribute.
Oh well, enjoy.
Disclaimer: Whitefox does not own Naruto. She does own this ideas of the different timelines, so if you want to use them in a story of yours, ask for permission first. Thank you and have a nice day.
Sasuke: The Man Who Should Have Been
1. Uchiha Sasuke is one of the most interesting men in the Elemental Nations. Not because of who he is, but who he could have – should have – been. While in this lifetime, he is the Orochimaru to Naruto's Jiraiya, in others he is not. In some other parallel universe, he is the hero of this story.
In some, he is merely an innocent victim of a madman's war.
These are the stories of Uchiha Sasuke. This is what he could have become if fate had dealt him the other cards.
2. In another lifetime, Sasuke is never born. In his place is a beautiful baby girl named Sugako.
Sugako is not fit to be a ninja. Her chakra coils are underdeveloped to the point where she can barely stand up. She is doomed to a life sitting in a wheelchair, wasting away as the world travels on without her.
This is her fate, and she accepted it a long time ago.
But then why does she feel compelled to write stories as she waits for death, tales of a gallant samurai warrior who struggles to find the truth about his illusive past? Why does she feel a deep, painful tug in her chest when she thinks of that blonde boy with the whisker marks on his cheeks?
When the Uchiha clan is wiped out, there are no survivors. When Hatake Kakashi finds her body, he is surprised that forensics say that Itachi killed Sugako quickly and cleanly and that the girl did not even try to fight back.
What forensics does not tell him is that Itachi cried for the first and only time that night as he held his dying sister.
3. In another lifetime, Sasuke does not make it in time to protect Naruto from Haku's senbon needles. Enraged, distraught, and horrified by the blonde's death, his Mangekyu awakens and the Hyouton user's last memories on earth are of a world clocked in black and a sky that is stained red.
As Sasuke wipes the tears of blood from his face and turns towards Naruto, he realizes that revenge such a petty thing. His friend is dead, just like his family is dead, and killing Haku or Itachi will not ever bring them back.
And that is when Sasuke's ambition dies.
It stays that way too, even after Naruto opens his eyes and starts to cough up blood.
4. In another lifetime, Sasuke's body is taken over by Orochimaru. He is unable to resist the ritual and his conscience is shoved into the corners of the Snake Sannin's mind to rot for all eternity.
It is only then that Orochimaru pulls his most outrageous move yet. He tries to assassinate Tsuande in broad daylight.
The keyword being tries.
He is stopped, not by the Hokage or Naruto or even Sakura, but by Uchiha Itachi. No one knows exactly how he did it, as most of it happened behind the veil of the Tsukuyomi, but whatever was, it was enough to knock the numbers of the Sannin down to two.
Itachi, weary and tired, only has enough strength to limp towards the memorial stone and carve Sasuke name in with a kunai before passing on.
5. In another lifetime, Sasuke looses himself to the cursed seal.
The battle with his brother costs him dearly, and now his skin is permanently dyed grey and his hair is forever long and the wings will not go away. His mind is blank and his eyes are soulless as he wanders the land in search of answers for questions he no longer has.
One day he walks through a pair of green gates that reveal a village that is almost hidden amongst the leaves of the forest surrounding it. As he passes through the streets, the citizens scream and back against the walls of the buildings. Then they catch a glimpse of his eyes and the whispers begin.
"Uchiha," they say, "But he's supposed to be dead."
He stops at the base of a red tower, at the top of it is a circle with some marking painted on it (a part of him says "Fire," but it is a very small part). He opens his wings and flies to the window on the top floor.
And inside are three men (Red, Yellow, and Black he calls them) and a woman (Pink). Red notices him first, pointing and yelling and pushing Pink behind him. Black looks but does not see, which he finds. Yellow rushes for the window and pulls him inside as soon as it is open.
And amidst all the startled gasps and the crying and the embraces, he cannot help but wonder…
Who is this Sasuke?
6. In another lifetime, Sasuke does not go traitor. Someone else does, though.
The note says that he is trying to save them, that he is too much of a danger to remain among them. Because they know where he is and if he stays in the village much longer, everyone will all be in peril.
Sasuke is terrified. He fears for Chouji, who stayed behind to fight that plant guy. He fears for Neji, who is battling the explosive specialist. He fears for Kiba, who fell over the cliff with that hunchback freak. He fears for Shikamaru, who is fighting the silver haired man. He fears for Lee, who saved him from that blue guy who was with Itachi that day.
And as Sasuke stands on the statue of the Shodai Hokage, he is able to see the face of the person who they have all been chasing on the head of Madara.
"NARUTO!" he calls out. The blonde turns towards him and the Uchiha can just barely make out blood red eyes in the place of his normal royal blue ones.
"Yo…ya freggin' bastard."
7. In another lifetime, Sasuke is killed in the Valley of the End. It is not because Naruto was too powerful for him to manage, or that he collapses from lack of chakra.
He dies because small, weak, little Haruno Sakura decides to come along with the rescue team.
She has seen her comrades stay behind to participate in fights against monsters that are way beyond their skill level. She has seen Lee drag himself halfway across the country in order to save her and Naruto. She has seen the look in Sasuke's eyes that tells her that he is going to kill Naruto, and he is going to enjoy it. She has seen it all and she has yet to break.
But when the Uchiha puts Chidori through the blonde's lung, she snaps and runs at him with a kunai.
It is only as his bloody body sinks to the bottom of the river, with his eyes open and his mouth frozen in a silent scream that Sakura allows herself to cry.
8. In another lifetime, Itachi never becomes a double agent. This sets off a series of events that most people would never see coming.
For one, Konoha falls into a state of civil war. The coup is successful and the Sandaime and the council are killed, but there is a small resistance that wants throw Fugaku from his thrown and bring democracy back. Jiraiya leads the rebellion with Tsuande as its chief healer.
Sasuke is captured one day when he is sixteen and brought back to the rebel base, located in the remnants of the Hyuuga compound. He does not remember how long he was kept in the damp and dark cell, but when he is literally dragged out by the ear by a brunette with her hair done up in buns and sees the life that the rebels have to lead in order to survive under Uchiha rule, he begins to question which side he should really be on.
This is only solidified when he watches a woman's baby die from lack of medical supplies. The mother's cries of "Hoshika! Hoshika!" will probably haunt him until his death.
When he starts giving them information out of his own free will, at first, people are suspicious. But then this blonde kid with whisker marks on his face vouches for him, so things start looking up.
The boy's name is Uzumaki Naruto, Sasuke discovers, and he is Jiraiya's apprentice. His girlfriend, Haruno Sakura, scares him to death with her ability to finger flick people through brick walls one minute and then go all lovey-dovey with Naruto the next. But they stick up for him as he slowly takes his place among the rebels, and that is all it takes for him to open up to them.
The rebels are a mix of every country that the Uchiha Empire has taken over. Naruto introduces him to a red headed boy from Suna named Gaara and his green haired 'we're-not-together-even-though-we-like-to-make-out' friend Fu, a rather feminine male named Haku, as well as an older blonde woman named Samui. They do not trust him, no one will, so Sasuke usually sits alone at the mess hall in the far back corner and picks at his food.
After he takes six kunai to the back for Jiraiya in a battle he has no business fighting in, he wakes up in the medic tent to find a Konoha hitai-ate (the true identification of a person loyal to Konoha, not the Uchiha) by his futon. He does not really know whether to laugh or cry.
But eventually, when he is in the company of people that love him for who is really is instead of who is father is, he does both.
9. In another lifetime, Sasuke does not get the chance to meet up with Juugo at the North Base. Instead he learns the dangers of eating tomato soup.
You see, tomatoes have a strong taste and the broth is quite easy for an assassin to hide poison in. And Karin knows this very, very well.
So when Sasuke's vision starts to blur and his body stops responding to his brain's commands, he finally gets it. Even though the red head is completely infatuated with him to the point where she will steal his bloody shirts, she is still human.
She is still a kunoichi.
The last thing that Sasuke sees is Karin wrapping her fingers around Suigetsu's (whose confused face is now as red as a beet). She leans in and whispers something in the former Kiri-nin's ear, and the Uchiha knows that it is only loud enough just to spite him in his last moments.
"What do you think about becoming a Konoha shinobi?"
He should have known – stupid, stupid Sasuke – he should have known.
Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.
10. In another lifetime, Kyuubi no Youko never attacks Konoha. This sets off a series of events that no one in their right mind will ever be able to fully understand.
For one, Sasuke would smile. A lot. In fact, he would smile so much that many of the Uchiha clan members (who would still be alive, as the coup never occurred) believe him to be adopted.
Sasuke would not have a small battalion of fangirls following him around through out his academy days. They would belong to Namikaze Naruto, son of the Yondaime, and already a chuunin at the age of twelve. Sasuke would want to be just like his brother's friend, Naruto-sempai, but then again so did everyone else in his class.
Another interesting note would be the complete role reversal of Sasuke and Karin's relationship as it would be Sasuke that would blush in her presence, Sasuke that would seek her attention, Sasuke that occasionally steel her glasses, and Karin that would give him the cold shoulder.
Well, either that or she would be as dense as Naruto when it comes to relationships.
Sasuke would live a happy and relatively long life for someone in the ninja business. He would die in the epic battle against Uchiha Madara and eight of the nine bijuu at the age of thirty. Rock Lee's last act before succumbing to the fate of those who open the Hachimon Tonko no Jinis to fling Sasuke onto the head of the Kyuubi in a desperate attempt to gain eye contact and break the spell of the Sharingan.
As the great fox tossed and turned after the genjutsu is released, Sasuke falls through the air and slams into the ground. He is killed instantly.
His only real regret is that he lost the bold, beautiful and deadly Karin to Suigetsu.
11. In another lifetime, Sasuke basically tells Madara to take his story and shove it somewhere painful.
Twice.
It is not that he does not believe his long dead ancestor. On the contrary, Sasuke does not doubt a single word that came out of the man's mouth. But Sasuke still has his morals and there are just certain lines that you do not cross in this world.
Itachi loved Konoha, so much that he gave up everything he was in order to protect it. As his younger brother, Sasuke is going to respect his wishes and not lay a finger on its inhabitants.
The members of Team Hebi all go their separate ways. Juugo finds a nice girl to settle down with in the south. She looks a lot like Kimimaro, he said, and that is enough to calm his killing instincts. Suigetsu just walks off one day after a particularly bad fight with Karin; Sasuke has not seen or heard of him since. Karin leaves after finally getting the message that he was not interested. They parted ways at a border town in the Land of Grass.
Sasuke travels north to Tori no Kuni. He does not know exactly how long he has been walking; all he really knows is that he wants to go home. Not back to Oto, not to the Uchiha, but home. A place where there is a little pink haired girl declaring her eternal love to him. A place where there is a scrawny blonde idiot in an orange jumpsuit that is too freaking stubborn to ever let him go.
But Sasuke knows he can never return, not without a full pardon or being in a body bag.
He needs a place to stay, Sasuke realizes one day. It is kind of cold, he has enough money, there is an orphanage up the street and…is that Naruto?
Is that ITACHI?!
Sasuke never gets the room, he is on the road again before he knows it; his brother on his left, his best friend on his right, and pardon in his hand.
He still does not know what to make of it.
12. In another lifetime, Sasuke becomes the jinchuuriki of the Kyuubi no Youko.
He does not understand why his father does not look at him. He does not understand why his mother is never there. He does not understand why Itachi mumbles an excuse to leave every time he steps into the room.
Sasuke just does not understand why he is so different.
Everyone – everyone – hates him, even people he does not know. And he has this voice in the back of his head telling him to do things that he really does not want to do.
Eight year old Uchiha Sasuke is so terrified of himself that on his birthday, he leaps off the roof of his family home in an attempt to kill himself.
It does not work.
He stabs himself in the gut with a kunai and wakes up three hours later covered in his own dried blood.
He tries years later to get himself killed on a mission. He makes it back alive. His teammates do not.
When Sasuke finally meets with the monster that his own father sealed inside of his body, sacrificing his mother's life in the process, he understands. It is the Kyuubi's ultimate revenge on the Uchiha clan: he has made Sasuke immortal.
He cannot age and he cannot die. Sasuke is doomed to live as all those he loved would wither away.
Because Sasuke is jinchuuriki, there truly is no end for him.
13. In another lifetime, Sasuke does not go willingly with the Sound Four to Otogakure. But since Orochimaru is not going to take no for an answer, Jirobo knocks the Uchiha out with his Chakra Kyūin no Jutsu while Sakon shoves the Seishingan down his throat and then the four of them stuff him in the bucket that they have lugged halfway across the continent.
When Sasuke finally emerges from his death-like trance, he does not laugh with his back to Naruto.
He screams.
The blonde does not find his best friend standing on the head of Uchiha Madara. Naruto finds Sasuke kneeling at the edge of the river, staring at his own reflection. His words are not, "Hey dumbass" or anything like that.
Sasuke manages – just manages – to say, "I can't make it go away" to the only person who could possibly understand him.
Kakashi arrives at the Valley of the End not to see an unconscious Naruto and an abandoned hitai-ate, but two friends…no, two brothers speaking softly about their burdens. And he just knows that those two are going to be legends someday.
14. In another lifetime, it is Sasuke that is the older brother to Itachi.
It does not make much of a difference though, only that the clan got to live about a year or two longer. Itachi is and will always be a genius, while Sasuke would be constantly overshadowed by him.
But when Itachi does kill off his family, Sasuke just knows something is wrong with his little brother's story. He says his "older brother instincts" are telling him that the weasel is lying through his teeth.
Sasuke gets his wish and learns of the truth. So when Akatsuki comes to take that blonde squirt from the guy who writes the Icha Icha series, he does not charge up a Chidori and run down the hallway screaming bloody murder. He calmly walks up to Itachi, punches him in the face, calls him a "fucking idiot" and then embraces him.
Hoshigaki Kisame becomes a vegetable right then and there.
15. In another lifetime, shinobi do not exist. That sets off a series of events that no one would ever believe.
This world is a lot like ours: people travel by car and truck, not on high speed legs; they fight with guns and explosives, not fists and kunai. No one has even heard of chakra, much less has it.
Sasuke lives a fairly normal life on the outside: he has got good grades, he is well respected amongst his peers, and he is getting a scholarship to some place up in the north. The University of Oto, they called it. It is where all the sports geniuses go, and he was hand picked by the President himself, Hebi Orochimaru.
So, seeking prestige and glory, Sasuke leave behind his friends: Naruto, the yakuza-wannabe; Sakura, the girl who loved him; Kakashi, the closest thing he has had to a father since his brother had murdered his real one.
Sasuke runs from them for power, and he gets it. The University's little secret to success is that over half of its famed athletes are on steroids provided by some guy named Juugo. Sasuke uses them to increase his physical abilities in order to kill the man he once called brother.
But this false power comes at a price. Sasuke's body begins to break down and the day before he graduates from University, he is admitted to the Hospital. His condition is fatal.
Uchiha Sasuke dies not in an epic gun fight with his deranged brother, Itachi, but surrounded by the three people who he left behind. Naruto's become the Yakuza boss and has actually transformed it from a group of third-rate criminals to a vigilantly force helping the police clean up the streets. Sakura is in medical school, getting her PhD. Kakashi still has the same job of teaching English at Konoha Gakuen, but apparently with them gone, things have gotten quiet dull.
Sasuke tries to send them away when it happens. He fails though, and passes from this world to the next staring into the green eyes of Sakura (secret crush), his hand being held by Naruto's (best friend) slightly larger tanned one, and head resting on Kakashi's (father) lap.
Uchiha Sasuke dies happy, something that he has not been in a long time.
16. In another lifetime, Sasuke does not decide to become an Avenger. He realizes that his ultimate revenge upon Itachi is not to follow his instructions. Sure, he'll kill the man if the opportunity came up, but there are also several other people that are just as qualified to take down his murderous kinsman.
After all, Sasuke is not the only person affected by the Uchiha Massacre.
So Sasuke makes friends, creates bonds, and learns to rely on his own power, which will take him farther than any shortcut ever could. He encourages Naruto's dream to be Hokage, helps Gaara take his first steps into true humanity, and is the first of the Rookie 9 to take down an Akatsuki member.
Deidara did not stand a chance against the Uchiha when he threatened one of Sasuke's closest friends, the Kazekage himself.
Sasuke helps break the longstanding tradition against the Team 7s of the past. He does not become Orochimaru, the vile monster of the Sannin. He does not become Kakashi, the teenager lost in his father's shadow.
Uchiha Sasuke becomes himself. And that is all he will ever need to be.
17. In another lifetime, Uchiha Obito survives the fated mission in which he gives his Sharingan eye to Kakashi. This sets off a series of events that would cause many people to openly gape at.
Obito, not Kakashi, would be Team 7's sensei and would smack the arrogance right out of Sasuke on the first day. The older man, having been disowned shortly after returning from the mission in Kusa with only one eye, teaches his nephew that clan heritage and genetics mean squat when you have heart and determination to back up what you say. He does this by tying Sasuke – not Naruto, not Sakura, but Sasuke – to the log.
When the second part of the Chuunin Exams came along, Team 7's teamwork would be able to hold off Orochimaru long enough for Anko and a patrolling squad of ANBU to arrive. Sasuke would never get the Cursed Seal and would finish off Akado Yoroi so fast that Hayate, the quickest of the Tokubetsu Jonin, would be genuinely surprised.
Sasuke would make chuunin a year later with Naruto and Sakura, jonin at sixteen with Neji and (again) Naruto, and then enter the ANBU at eighteen.
When asked about his proudest moment, Sasuke would respond that it would be the look on his sensei's face when Rokudaime Hokage Namikaze Uzumaki Naruto promotes him to ANBU commander the day of his coronation.
He is secretly lying of course. His proudest moment occurs two weeks later when he escorts his tired, blind brother to the hospital and says three simple words.
"I forgive you."
18. In another lifetime, there is no coup. There is no uprising. There is no plan.
Itachi actually killed the clan to measure his capacity.
Sasuke life ends with a shuriken to his throat and bleeds out with his eyes on parents, his brother silently stepping over him, and an unanswered question on his mind:
"Why?"
19. In another lifetime, Sasuke kills Naruto in the Valley of the End. And it is then, and only then, does he finally break.
Kakashi arrives to find two bodies, both with lightning burns surrounding the holes in their chests. He carries them both back while Obito's eye cries tears that his own eye no longer has.
Naruto and Sasuke are given a joint funeral and are buried under the same gravestone. Sakura joins them a week later, dying from a broken heart.
Konoha is never the same.
Jiraiya disappears and never returns.
Tsuande once again takes up binge drinking and dies from alcohol poisoning.
Ino and Shikamaru simply drop out of the shinobi program.
Neji becomes more distant than he ever was.
Lee stops smiling.
Tenten starts to miss her targets.
Chouji never lets himself truly recover from his ingestion of his clans pills.
Kiba thinks that if Shino had been in his place, the mission would have gone differently.
Shino KNOWS that if he had been on the mission, it would have gone differently.
And Hinata?
Hinata goes insane and becomes the crazy berserker that the council sends out when they are too scared to give anyone normal a certain mission.
Konoha has lost its light, its darkness, and its sunrise. It has lost three of the most promising shinobi in a century and it will never recover.
20. In this lifetime, Sasuke dies young. He passes away at the age of twenty with his eyes on Itachi, his fist through Naruto's heart, and Sakura's hand through his head.
Sasuke watches over them from the beyond. He watches as his former teammates become a couple. He watches as his brother is slowly accepted back into Konoha society. He watches as Gaara takes his place in their hearts.
His family comes to him sometimes, throwing around words like "it was for the clan" and "you did what you needed to do." But they don't know why tried to kill Naruto; they will never be able to understand.
Sometimes Kakashi visits him. Sasuke thinks that the older man knows why he did it, if only because Kakashi has been there and he has done that, so if he has not guessed by now the Uchiha will be very disappointed in him.
Sasuke did what his brother did: he made a choice. One that carried great personal sacrifice either way he turned. And he choose the lesser of two terrible evils.
It was Naruto or everybody.
The Kyuubi no Yoko, the monstrous beast that lived in the blonde's belly, had to die, because if it did not, Madara's plan could succeed. They had relocated the Jinchuuriki of the Hachibi six months ago and extracted the bijuu from the seal on his forehead. The eye that would hold the Ichibi was too damaged from the failed extraction of Gaara so long ago to ever work again. But if Akatsuki got the Kyuubi, everything would be alright.
So if Naruto died, it would through a wrench in their plans because their time limit on the Gedo Mazo and its second blindfold was almost up.
Madara would lose.
Sasuke would die, but that did not matter.
"They had a kid," he muttered one day to Kakashi, "They named her Kushina, after Naruto's mother. She's got her mom's hair…and her dad's eyes."
"She's got Kyuubi's claws," the older man pointed out.
There is silence, and then, "Sakura asked Gaara to be the godfather."
The "that should have been me" is left out.
Kakashi mourns for Sasuke, because he should have been there. He should have been there as Naruto's best man at the wedding. He should have been there, next to Sakura at the coronation.
Sasuke should have been there.
Kakashi mourns for Sasuke, the Man Who Should Have Been.
Man, Sasuke's really got some bad luck hasn't he. I mean, he was killed nine times in this tribute. [holds up tally chart] Itachi gets him three times, Sakura twice, Karin and the Kyuubi each kill him once, then he ODs on steriods and commits suicide.
That's messed up.
Really messed up.
I'll try for Sakura again next time. Or maybe Tenten.
I need to write a girl, damn it.
Later,
Whitefox