Disclaimer: Naruto, his friends and the universe they live in don't belong to me but to Masashi Kishimoto. I don't earn any money with this story but write it solely for my pleasure.


A/N: my story is now definitely AU/AR. I will still continue it - thanks for all the reviews for chapter two that encouraged me to go on! The story will also take up some speed, with less new questions and more revelations...

I hope that you still like "my" Madara. I created him knowing only what we had seen of Tobi so far. Inventing a backstory for him was probably a bit risky, and seems a bit out of character with the backstory we get in the manga now... But what I seem to have got right: The original Madara as well seems to be a rather whiny person, always complaining that no one understands and loves him... ;-)


Chapter Three: ... From the Clan

"It's true", I continued. "I did help Itachi that night. But – don't judge prematurely – it's more complicated than you think. I would never have helped Itachi if I had known how it would all end."

"You kill them all, and in the end they are all dead. Where's the surprise?"

"We did not mean to... We did not plan to kill the whole clan. It just happened."

"You are not trying to tell me that you killed every single person of the clan: men, women, children, old people, only by accident?"

"Not by accident. Things went wrong and got out of hand. We had learnt of a secret meeting of some of the Uchiha leaders and thought we might kill them in one go without any witnesses, as it was a secret meeting and no one else was allowed to attend it. But suddenly there were witnesses; Itachi panicked and killed them as well, but only after they had called for help, so that he had to kill everyone else who turned up."

"And you?"

"I fled. I can use space-time-ninjutsu."

He poured himself some more coffee.

"You are a real coward", he said. "With Deidara as well: You fled and let him do all the fighting, until he killed himself with that suicide jutsu of his."

"I never approved of this fight. He wanted to kill himself."

"He wanted to kill me."

"Because you killed Orochimaru whom he would have preferred to kill himself. Has there ever been a more stupid reason for trying to kill someone?"

"I can think of a lot of stupid reasons to kill people", he said.

"So can I", I replied.

This round had ended with a draw, and after some minutes of thinking he asked his next question:

"So you are trying to tell me that you fled when you had killed whom you wanted to kill while Itachi went on and murdered the whole clan."

"Yes. Because he could not afford any witnesses."

"Then why did he let me stay alive?"

"You were not exactly a witness. He had to tell you that it had been him who had killed the whole clan. He did not even think that anyone would believe you."

He looked up at me. "Do you enjoy this game?"

"Which game? Oh, yes, actually I do. I want you to think for yourself."

He did not answer but stood up and went inside. I wondered whether I should hurry up – tell him in plain words what had happened, and why, and what I wanted him to do. Maybe this was the fastest way to get an answer from him – maybe it was the fastest way to get a clear decisive no. I had to stick to my original plan: Slowly make him doubt and think and trust me. At least I no longer had to worry about making him listen to me: He was now coming of his own accord and asking me questions. Now, for example, he returned with a plate full of food and already the next question on his mind:

"Did you really kill your best friend and your brother?"

The sudden change of subject caught me off guard, and again I could do nothing but tell him the truth: "I killed my best friend. I did not kill my brother."

"But you plucked out his eyes to get a permanent Mangekyou Sharingan."

"I did."

"With your finger?"

Sometimes his questions were really weird.

"Of course not! How should this be possible? You need a skilled surgeon to transplant someone's eyes into someone else. Anyway, where should they have been implanted?"

"Into the sockets of your original eyes, after removing them."

I shook my head. "It works differently. You do it in the world of Tsukuyomi. If the victim falls into it, believing that its eyes have been plucked out, the brain will cut them off from the blood circulation so that after some seconds one is blind for real. Also the implanting takes place in that world: The eyes get implanted into the head that represents you there, and mine has four eyes."

"And your real head has only one", he stated in that weird satisfied tone he assumed when he thought he had got the better of me. "Which of your jutsus did you overuse? Tsukuyomi or Amaterasu?"

"Neither. It was a cataract. A rather common illness among older people."

"So was it worth taking your brother's eyes? Now you are half blind anyway."

"It gained me several decades with a permanent Mangekyou Sharingan."

"Was it worth it?" he asked again. "The suffering you caused him? Turning his love into hatred?"

"Well, I must admit that after I had plucked out his eyes our relationship was not quite what it had been before. But he snatched my lover away from me."

"And this was why you blinded him?"

"You misunderstand me. He did it after the event."

"Even though he was blind?"

"Even though he was blind and I was one of the strongest shinobi of my time. She would not let me near her when she had learnt what had happened, instead she tended to my brother, cared for his wounds, helped him while he was learning to live without his sight, and after a while she fell in love with him and married him. Only when he died some ten years later from some infection that had entered his brain through his dead eyes, she would suffer me in her presence again, she even allowed me to help her look after her children, but she would not let me touch her."

"Serves you right", he said, rather amused about what had been the greatest pain of my life. And, even worse, I had to admit that he was right.

"She was too pure and too good to go on living with a man who had blinded and eventually killed his own brother."

"And she did not mind that you had killed your best friend?"

"She did not know."

"You are the weirdest person I have ever met", he said, shaking his head. He thought for a while before he asked his next question: "Did it go on in our clan? The plucking out of each other's eyes, and the killing of one's best friends?"

"Itachi told you about it, didn't he? I saw it on the video."

"Indeed."

"It did not go on – not as he made it look like, as if all Uchihas were plucking out their younger brothers' eyes and killing their best friends – not as if you were doomed to be your brother's murderer or be murdered by him from the moment of your birth. Think back: You had uncles, and cousins, and your father had cousins and second cousins and third cousins."

"Yes, indeed."

"And most of them were not blind."

"None actually, except for one of my granduncles who was rather old."

I asked for the man's name, and it was as I had suspected: He had been the one of his generation who had agreed to obtain the Mangekyou Sharingan.

"And there were no unaccounted deaths among the Uchihas as long as you can remember."

"Only Shisui, and his death was not really unaccounted for."

"So you can answer your question yourself: It was not a generally accepted custom among the Uchihas to kill their best friends and their brothers."

"So Itachi was lying when he said that he would take out my eyes and free himself from our wretched clan's destiny?"

"What should this destiny have been?" I asked back, thinking that their real destiny had been to be murdered by Itachi.

"Having to kill each other to achieve the summit of their powers."

"You don't free yourself from such a curse by doing exactly what it demands – that's ridiculous. Think for yourself, and trust your own senses, not Itachi's words!"

"Or yours."

"Indeed. Trust your own reason and your own senses more than my words."

He had finished his breakfast, so finally he stood up and went into the fortress, taking his plate into the kitchen. A few minutes later he returned, passing me without talking to me or even looking at me, not to mention that he would tell me where he went. I told myself to trust him to come back – to trust him to ask more questions, as there were still a lot of things he did not understand. I was useful to him – and I still had a chance to make him follow my plans. Yet despite all my deliberations I went into his room and was relieved to find his sword and all his other stuff still there.

I went for a walk myself, and on my return I found him sitting outside and sewing. He had found scissors and needle and thread and some red and white fabric and was applicating the clan's crest to the clothes I had given him. He was quite good at it, for a guy: The stitches were neat and regular, and the fabric of the crest lay flatly without any crinkles on that of the shirt.

I watched him for a while before he noticed me and looked up.

"Wear it with pride", I told him on a sudden impulse. "They are worth it. There might have been some who were evil, as I myself, who killed his brother and his best friend, but most of them were righteous, law-abiding citizens who as policemen saw that others kept to the law as well."

He looked down again on his work, and I wondered whether it was really just in order to continue his sewing.

"Where did you learn to sew so well?" I asked in a more casual tone.

"There were enough women at Orochimaru's place, and some were quite good at it", he answered. "I used my Sharingan on them."

"You may use your Sharingan on me while I am making coffee", I said. I had just not been able to resist.

"I am not stupid", he answered. "I know how to make coffee. There was always coffee at Orochimaru's place."

For a second I considered asking him to prove it to me, but I did not, as he was still busy sewing. I made some myself and took it outside, together with two coffee mugs.

He in the meantime had thought of more questions to ask me:

"You say that you did not set out to kill the whole clan", he began. "But you did intend to kill some of its members."

"Yes, certainly", I answered. "And I am not ashamed of it."

"So whom did you want to kill in the first place, and why?"

I told him the names – names of some of the clan leaders. His father was not among them; understandably he was glad about it.

"What was wrong with them?" he asked.

"We had the suspicion that they were going to do something to you."

"To me?"

"Have you never wondered why Itachi spared you?"

"I have often wondered and came up with one answer after the other, but none of them made sense. Now I think that it was simply because Itachi wanted to take my eyes, but this does not make sense either, because I don't have the Mangekyou Sharingan."

"Maybe he had grown desperate so that he thought: Rather your normal Sharingan eyes than none at all. Though I am still not sure whether he really intended to take them. After all, his motivation has always been to protect you: That's why he spared you in the end. The whole massacre would have been pointless if he had killed you as well."

"You went to rather extreme measures to protect me, don't you think?" Sasuke continued his questioning. "Why did you, or Itachi, not warn my parents? They would have protected me?"

"He feared that they were involved in whatever they were planning to do to you. Maybe he had even tried to talk to them, and nothing had come out of it. Don't protest – I do think that they loved you, both of them, but they were loyal to clan and village, and with too much pressure put on them to give you over they would eventually have given in."

He had stopped working – he just sat there, his arms folded in front of his chest.

"I don't know whether this is true", I hurried to say. "It's just what Itachi thought. Maybe it was all a fantasy of his."

"And you? What did you think?"

"I did not ask about your parents. I asked about the clan leaders Itachi initially wanted to kill. I knew them, and I thought them capable of doing something to you to save the clan's honour and reputation. They were the kind of people who would do anything for their honour – always busy with their righteousness and the facade, no matter what was beneath the surface. Always busy covering things up – even minor sins, as having sex without being married. Everyone does it, and when the girl gets pregnant the young couple will have to marry. Not among the Uchihas however, they would rather put the young woman under pressure to kill her newborn child, and if a man of the clan got a girl pregnant, they would make him abandon her and marry a woman with a flawless reputation, not the one he loved but who was very obviously not a virgin any more.

"What do you say?" Sasuke asked, genuinely shocked. "They made women kill their babies?"

"They used to. On one of these occasions the truth got out, so afterwards they would rather suggest to the girl that it would be better if she committed suicide."

"Did you not just tell me that they were an honourable clan?"

"They did it for their honour. But don't worry: The killing of best friends and brothers was not regular custom. It's easy to hide the pregnancy of a young woman who does not get out much, and the death of a child no one knew that it ever existed – it's difficult to cover up the disappearance of a grown-up man."

"They might have managed", he mused.

"They did not", I tried to reassure him. "No one is eager to pay the price for the Mangekyou Sharingan – no one wants to become blind. Even I discovered it rather by accident. - However, both Itachi and I feared that these men who were always busy with the honour of the clan were going to do something to you that was easier to cover up than murder, and still terrible."

"As blinding me."

"Maybe."

"And this is the reason why Itachi and you went out to kill them – and in consequence the whole clan – all on mere rumours and suspicion and a rather irrational dislike against them."

"My dislike was not irrational", I protested. "And it was not only suspicion and rumours."