A/N: Okay, so I have no idea what made this update so quick. Maybe its the fact that I have two final papers due in a week and I'm procrastinating productively. Maybe. Regardless, enjoy this chapter!
All his life he had been searching for something, propelling himself towards some nebulous end goal.
It would be a solitary path, one destined to be tread alone, and he had hardened his heart, perfected his abilities after hours and months and years arduous training, and severed all his bonds to prepare himself for it. Nothing would stop him; nothing could stop him. He thought he had reached it in the brief moments after Itachi's death when – in the expected rush of relief, excitement and fulfillment – all that came was emptiness; he thought he had reached it – was close to reaching it, at the very least – as his spear of lightning pierced through Danzo's chest and as he so casually cast aside that foolish girl Karin (who became less and less foolish as the years passed); he thought he had finally reached it when he held Naruto's limp body upon the ruins of what used to be called the Valley of the End, the waterfall having been flattened, decimated in its entirety as entire landscapes and mountains transformed throughout the cosmic course of their legendary battle, and yet what came after was but a certain numbness he tried fervently to supplant with artificial conviction.
Even after he had singlehandedly slaughtered the Gokage in their sleep, united the Five Elemental nations and fashioned the Continent under his own image, something was still missing. He was not always bothered by the persistent deficiency remaining within him; as time went by it became easier and easier to ignore. Rationalisation became a daily habit: Naruto simply had to die for him to establish peace – no, enforce peace amongst the squabbling, small-minded nations. Enforcement was an active endeavour. Naruto was a sacrifice, he told himself. The closest thing he had to a best friend performed what could only be described as a noble and necessary duty. For the greater good. Yes, he would quietly honour the man his regime so publicly vilified by erecting a small, unassuming gravestone – a place, a holy site of pilgrimage where he would visit from time to time to remember the reason for everything, for why he continued to do what he did. The rationality behind it all was infallible. (And anyone who questioned his reasoning would be eradicated.)
The anonymous, pitiful monument was an image he would burn into his memory, trace vividly in his mind as he surveyed the lands he ruled. Quietly, it resided in his consciousness as he went through his daily paper work, as he ordered his underlings around in his high and mighty Hokage robes, as he patiently formulated the Land of Water's fishery laws (because bureaucrats were just so damn useless – but a necessary evil all the same), as he clinically dispatched secret task forces against pockets of insurgencies, as he caught faint glimpses of civilians – defenseless civilians – cowering under the interrogations of his thought police (again, a necessary evil: a small portion of the population is repressed in exchange with the inevitable chaos that must happen if minds were really allowed to roam free because that was simply the way humans were), as he occasionally punished officials that had expended his tolerance for incompetence (because he would like to think that he still had some standards) and as he thwarted Hi no Ishi's plan time after time. It was all for Itachi and, paradoxically, Naruto for Naruto's death by his own hands had to mean something. It meant that peace, however sordid its origins and however morally dubious its means of maintenance, would reign universally. It meant young children no longer had to die in wars – and young children no longer did. The last war - when discounting the petty conflicts Hi no Ishi and isolated cells of resistance instigated occasionally, which were often sniffed out in days – happened 17 years ago.
He tries not to think about his old acquaintances that still lived, crystallize whatever affectionate times he shared with them into stale, unchangeable shards of memory that he stored, temporarily, in his psyche and then tossed away into the cesspit of time when he was finally ready to be rid of them. Sakura, Kakashi, Ino, Chouji, Shikamaru, Lee, Karin, Suigetsu, Jugo – they were as good as dead to him. His heart scarcely flinched when he dispatched them from the realm of the living. Their lives were like paper (his too); death, after all the pain, ultimately ended in sleep. It was needed. Those people, they knew him from before he was Hokage, they were a connection to his past and the past world that was so chaotic, degenerate and evil. He severed, tried to sever, every single bond he still had. It became progressively easier. Gradually, he became omnipotent, untouchable, unquestionable, unapproachable. The Hokage became a figure across the nations so feared, revered and hated depending on who you were that he united everyone in relation to him. Boundaries between the Wind, the Leaf, the Sand, the Stone, the Mist, the Rain, the Grass and all villages big and small dissipated.
(Power begets loneliness and absolute power begets absolute loneliness.)
He was finally alone.
Hadn't it been what he always wanted?
It was what it meant to Hokage: to shoulder all the darkness and hatred in the world.
For years, he was content on living in his version of reality, being unperturbed and unceasingly determined to continue what he had started that fateful day by the Valley of the End, to consolidate and perpetuate his rule, his peace. The advent of the prophecy hadn't disturbed him as much as it should have – as if a few unknown strangers from a foreign world could succeed thousands of others shinobi and kunoichi failed. Hi no Ishi, the naïve and misguided bunch of fools they were, believed they could harness the three peculiar newcomers to their own advantage and finally instigate a successful insurrection. As if. Perhaps Sasuke still needed time to ready himself for the deaths of his two remaining teammates, or perhaps the existence of Mount Myoboku as a refuge for those that hated him was necessary: it was a contained flame, useful in channeling the frustrations of the implacable, in settling in those who would never have belonged in his society – provided that it did not get out of hand.
He was no saint; saints were useless.
Then, after seventeen years, he was met with the same earnest, brilliant blue eyes, the same spike of blond hair, the same whiskers around the cheek, the same self-assured and sheepish grin. For a moment, he let his fantasies run wild as he imagined Naruto Uzumaki's conception of a secret child with Hinata Hyuuga or even Sakura Haruno and conceived the preposterous scenario of the child seeking revenge for the father after all these years. When these imaginations went out of hand, Sasuke went somewhere even more improbable – he began to think about what could have happened (if this really was a child from another dimension.) What if Naruto was the one who had won? What if, during any point of their fateful friendship, Naruto had managed to drag him back to the village? What if things could have been different? He shut down those poisonous thoughts before they could inundate his mind. Still, the sudden existence of Boruto Uzumaki was a curious phenomenon that left him insatiate.
Draw the boy in – that had been his strategy. That was why he offered the job instantaneously. Find out more; gather information as a shinobi would, while being fully aware that the boy was likely attempting the same. When he re-familiarized himself with the existence of the dimension-travelling scroll after a sleepless night of scouring through his personal library, he already had a strong inclination of just who the boy was. The subtle verbal antics, the small fidgeting acts (and surprisingly enough, not the undying love for ramen) and the uncanny resemblance seemed to confirm his hypothesis. (His worst nightmare – no. Not that.)
During their interactions, Sasuke would try to discern every facet of Boruto's personality, his being. The boy who he expected to be so predictable, to be an exact carbon copy of the deceased father, possessed his own unexpected elements. His familiarity with the Uchiha shuriken technique (which led Sasuke to suspect their relative… closeness in Boruto's own world), his boisterous but at the same time wry mannerisms, his mildly spoilt demeanour and frustrating carefreeness, a clear indication of someone who had grown up in a time of peace, his relative cynicism and selfishness (because when it came to idealism and self-sacrifice, no one bested Naruto), his surprising pragmatism with regards to this world and his own, at least initially, set him apart too. Sometimes, Sasuke felt he could see traces of himself in the boy too. Then again, he could say the same with Naruto himself. Nevertheless, the boy's unflinching dedication and desire to protect his friends reminded Sasuke too much of the father, something Hanabi Hyuuga – curse her name – later had so unhelpfully pointed out.
It was the last thing he wanted. Sasuke gave Boruto the scroll in hopes that the boy would take it and be gone forever – out of sight, out of mind, or so they all say. Like banishing the demons of your past would be so simple. He was faintly pleased when the boy took it, albeit in a fazed and baffled manner, and relieved when the boy agreed to try to take his friends with him back to their own world. (He did not even want to think about that Sarada girl Boruto brought up – a possible future with Sakura seemed so absurd, so unreachable after all that had happened.) The threat to kill the boy was made rather offhandedly; he didn't think he would actually have needed to enact it. Something had gone wrong though, he could sense it. Out of the three pieces of chakra that abruptly arrived in this world, only one made its way back.
(When Sakura shows up with a girl with his dark raven hair and, very likely, dark black eyes, he does his best to suppress the strange whirlwind of confused emotions coursing through his mind. He did his best to minimize their time of interaction.)
When Boruto returned again, Sasuke felt a mild irritation blossoming in his chest. The peeved sentiments soon revealed themselves to go way beyond condescending annoyance, as the emperor of them all directs towards his underlings. Curiosity, a thirst for knowledge, was what drew him back to the boy again, a boy who represented what the world could have been, what he could have been. It prompted introspection and Sasuke hated introspection. He never wanted to see the boy die; he had no reason to wish for Boruto's death. And when they were alone, conversing in that café, he felt the inexplicable urge to convince the boy, to justify what he was doing, to prove to Boruto that he was not a monster. Somehow, he thought the boy would understand, or come as close to understanding as anyone still alive would. (The dead were dead and there was no point in contemplating about their reactions to the living.) Having the boy as a confidant also made sense: when he was gone, back to his own world, all of Sasuke's secrets would go too.
When he let Boruto reside in his own dwellings, he experienced the peculiar desire of opening – parts – of himself up. When the boy spoke so passionately about his own beliefs, seemingly renewed by his experiences in this world, which were also Naruto's beliefs, Sasuke felt an uncomfortable tug in the heartstrings that he managed to mask behind his long perfected façade of blankness. It should have irritated him, for a young boy to display such an act of insolence, of boldness, of brashness, of bravery right in his face. Instead, all he felt was numbness. As they shared awkward meals, progressed into quaint small talk and even laughed as they exchanged a few jokes, a feeling of fondness – almost avuncular in its nature – crept through Sasuke's heart. Eventually, he could no longer resist Boruto's proposal and plunged into scenes of the boy's world. He claimed he was interested (and he was) and he was, in fact, mildly concerned about the possibility of an alien invasion; however, what fundamentally drove him was a yearning to understand Boruto's world, the things that shaped him, all of which were linked to Sasuke's own past, of the paths untaken and the ideals he himself could have embraced when he was still a young teenager ready to take on the entire world.
The more he learnt about Boruto's world, the more he felt his own heart sink. It wasn't meant to be like this, he internally argued, screeched – he was the one fate had ultimately chosen over Naruto. His ideas were meant to be superior, his world superior, and his peace superior. Emptiness returned. He did not know what to think about anymore, how to make sense of the jaded philosophy that drove him all through his life. A trip down that boy's memory lane was all it took.
(All around him, his world was crumbling. His logic was the futile repairman, rushing frantically to and fro to fix the cracks – though only superficially.)
He tried to harden his mind, strengthen his will. He wasn't sure whether it worked or not. He continued to interact in a fairly amicable manner with his prisoner – no, his guest. And when Boruto proclaims that he really wasn't so bad, his heart almost jumps out of him. It had been years since anyone had sincerely complimented him; the obsequious sycophants that never ceased to conjure grandiose titles and epithets didn't count, for they irritated him to the extreme and only his need for their service prevent him from incinerating them on the spot.
Momoshiki and Kinshiki were unexpected and extraneous disrupters, even more so than Boruto, Sarada and Mitsuki. With their arrival, Sasuke could not help but wonder whether the world where Naruto emerged as the Nanadaime Hokage would have been better prepared for their onslaught. They were certainly defeated; he was not so sure whether his world would win.
Fighting Kinshiki had been a drain. He ultimately gained the upper hand but not without a cost. He could feel his chakra being slowly depleted as he matched the ogre's powerful attacks one by one. Then, the even more eerie Momoshiki bizarrely snatched his victory away from him by turning Kinshiki into a chakra pill.
As he rushed from fight to fight, towards Boruto's defiant yet pathetically unequipped figure, there was an unmistakable protectiveness that welled up inside him. As he came face to face with Naruto's reanimated figure, uncontrolled this time and possessing its own independent free will, he did not know what to think or act. Avoidance was the best remedy. As he caught a glimpse of Sarada, the girl who could have been his daughter, he wanted nothing but to fight Momoshiki alone. He hoped Sakura would never show up, for seeing Kakashi and fighting alongside the man again was already bad enough.
Making temporary alliances was part of being shinobi; nonetheless, the current crop of shinobi and kunoichi around him were the last people in the world he wanted to be with. He suspected that most of them reciprocated his feelings.
But when Boruto had smiled and told him that the one that mattered was what he did now, he wanted to believe in the boy so badly. That old headband of his – technically Boruto's headband and the headband of his counterpart in that strange alternate dimension – reminded him of all the old times he spent fighting alongside Team 7. Repressed feelings of nostalgia aside, it was something that no longer suited him. It now had a new master, a better owner. If it used to represent the paths diverged, he hoped that it would now represent whatever Boruto, whatever Naruto believed – and wherever his world and the other world converged.
Momoshiki was, to his horror, gradually gaining the upper hand as the deity wielded a strange, fluid substance that ate straight into Naruto and Sasuke's defences. It eradicated the very essence of existence; it embodied destruction.
Sarada pummeled her fists into the ground, fists that were also coated with electrical chakra, and below them, the earth splintered, causing shockwaves to emanate through the entirety of the neighbourhood. Boruto gaped at just how awesome his friend's display of power was; he would not wish to anger her in the future. It caused even Momoshiki to momentarily falter and miss an attack on Naruto and Sasuke.
Together, Boruto and Sarada rushed to the scene. Boruto threw an explosive kunai towards Momoshiki, which barely made a scratch but drew his attention away from bombarding Naruto with blasts of Dust Release, who was recovering from a temporarily disintegrated hand.
The fight was going nowhere. Firstly, Boruto theorized, they needed to extinguish Momoshiki's Rinnegan, or at least render it incapacitated, which would widen the possibilities of options used in the fight. Then, they would have to find a way to quite literally annihilate Momoshiki from existence – last time, it had been done with a gigantic Rasengan, but Boruto wasn't sure whether the exact replica would work.
[Careful, Boruto. You nearly just got hit by that weird gooey substance.]
"Hey, asshole," Boruto yelled. "Why don't you come after me?!"
Momoshiki turned around, irked. "If you're really so keen on dying…"
"Get away from him!" Naruto shouted and threw himself in front of Momoshiki's way, quickly creating an army of shadow clones that immediately began attacking the enemy.
"Thanks Da-Naruto!"
"Hey, kid, you can call me dad! Man, the idea of me as a father seems so weird. I mean, here I am, kind of not alive but stuck in the age of seventeen. But here you are, as that weird kid from the other world-"
"Hey! I'm not weird!"
"That's not what I meant!"
"I'm not weird," Boruto repeated flatly.
"Of course, you are technically my son!"
"You're technically only four years older!"
"Yeah, but we're talking hypothetically here!"
"Fine, fine – but I'm not calling you dad."
"But I will always be your dad!" Naruto declared triumphantly with a wide grin that most certainly did not add to his paternal qualities.
"Heh. Okay, in spirit, if not in actuality."
"Man, all of this made me wish that we had gotten to know each other more. Was I totally awesome as a dad in the other world? And the best Hokage ever?"
"You were a great Hokage, and – and the best dad in the world," Boruto finished with a strange lump in his throat, remembering the days he used to spend cursing his father for neglecting his family in favour of his job. It wasn't until that day with the disastrous chuunin exam tournament, the day when he was disgraced in public by his own dad, the day when the stadium burned, wailing voices of terrified spectators and crying voices of young children emanating through the place as mighty columns crumbled and smoke and fire permeated the air, the day when, for a brief moment, his world went up in flames as his very own father had sacrificed his life to save the village, to save Boruto.
"Wow," Naruto merely replied, his look suddenly pensive. He was shortly jolted out of his reverie by another one of Momoshiki's nefarious black orbs.
Momoshiki was finishing off the remnants of the shadow clones, dispatching them one by one as if they were nothing but petty toy soldiers. "I guess I'll just have to dispose of you then. After all, container of the Kyuubi, you were what I came after. The rest of them – a mere afterthought."
"You were what I came after."
Momoshiki's words struck a chord within Sarada.
[The Kyuubi.]
If Naruto's reanimation had been undone, there would be no Kyuubi for Momoshiki to extract and then everything would be sort of fine, even if it meant that they would still have to deal with an angry deity. Suddenly, it clicked.
"Mitsuki!" Sarada called to the person in the closest proximity to her. "I get it! I think I've figured it out!"
"Sarada! What's the matter?" Mitsuki answered as he narrowly pulled Kakashi out of harm's way, barely missing a deadly hit himself.
"The Kyuubi," Sarada said under panted breath. "Momoshiki is after the Kyuubi, which is sealed within Naruto-sama and whose reanimation could technically be undone. I've read it somewhere – in some scroll about experimentations with jinchurikis in the Mist back when it was called the Bloody Mist, not that I approve of any-"
"Sarada," Kakashi urged, "Get to the point."
"Okay," Sarada repeated, "So basically when jinchuriki dies, the person that is supposed to host a tailed beast and anchor it into the world of the living, the tailed beast temporarily… vanishes too. We need to undo Naruto-sama's reanimation. It's the only way we can at least buy some time-"
"If only it were that easy." Sasuke's voice. All throughout the fight, Sarada had avoided direct interaction with the cold man that could have been her father. He seemed so different, so estranged, so different from the man she knew. It was positively disconcerting. More than that, it did not seem like he wanted to talk to her either – though he had taken a strange liking for Boruto. It was all so confusing to her. "It was Orochimaru who executed the process of reanimation. Though I believe I do possess the ability to exercise control over his current being. It can be done, but-"
If his voice didn't sound so detached and steady, Sarada would have vouched that he was in the process of a mild mental breakdown.
"I can try," Mitsuki volunteered. "I – long story but I've known Orochimaru in my world for a long time and he's taught me a few sealing tricks. Plus, I might have nicked a few interesting masks in addition to all the books I took for Boruto and I looked through their inner workings and -"
"Stick to the topic." Sarada rolled her eyes.
"Point is," Mitsuki continued. "I might know what to do."
"So," Kakashi said, "We get Naruto and Mitsuki out of the fight, all while we try to distract Momoshiki's attention. Naruto and the Kyuubi would have to…" - Kakashi paused, mildly painful of contemplating a second goodbye with his beloved student –"… excuse me, depart the living world. Then we at least guarantee that the Kyuubi won't be instantly made into chakra pills."
"Basically," Sarada concurred.
"This better work," Sasuke muttered. "I'll switch places with Naruto. Be quick." The man shut his eyes and when he opened them, his figure vanished, being replaced by a slightly baffled Naruto.
"Hey! I was just having some quality father and son time with Boruto. Well, maybe more like brotherly time, considering we're basically only four years apart," Naruto protested exasperatedly, though Sarada could tell he was not entirely serious.
"We're sorry Naruto," Kakashi apologized before going on to explain things. "But you see, the situation here is dire. Momoshiki is after Kurama in you and we need to, first things first, stop him from extracting Kurama and making it into a powerful chakra pill. To do so requires your departure from this world. Mitsuki claims to have figured out a way."
Naruto nodded understandingly, not interrupting, not budging the slightest. "I know… the dead ultimately should stay dead, that much I know. I – thank you, for allowing me to see my loved ones again in my own free and conscious mind. And thanks for, well, material for imagination. Heh. I wonder how everyone in the realm of the dead would have reacted to the possibility of me being Hokage. Well, goodbye Kakashi, goodbye Sarada. Mitsuki, let's go!"
Mitsuki gave him an inclination and the two sped out of the battlefield, hoping to do their part in protecting the world.
"What just happened?" Boruto asked Sasuke as the man instantly switched places with Naruto.
"I'll explain later," Sasuke replied. "In the meantime, let's take him down."
"Shannaroo!" Sarada yelled as she punched the ground again, causing flecks of debris to fly towards Momoshiki.
Kakashi entered the fray too, tossing a giant shuriken in Momoshiki's direction.
"The Rinnegan," Boruto whispered to Sasuke. "We need to get rid of it to get rid of him."
"Or alternatively," Sasuke suggested, "We could skip through that and simply get rid of him."
"Our options would have been limited," Boruto argued, "Without his Rinnegan he is vulnerable to ninjutsu attacks."
"Very well." Sasuke frowned. "And you're thinking of doing it."
"Yes," Boruto said. "Just watch me."
A/N: So how was the part with Sasuke's introspections throughout the course of the story? I've tried to get myself into his mind and imagine his path of reasoning, his motivations after Naruto's death and all the way to Boruto, Sarada and Mitsuki's arrival. It was certainly difficult; it was nevertheless a very entertaining process. I'm not sure how it turned out - I'd like to think that a small part of Sasuke would be remorseful and conflicted but that he was very good at ignoring the tugs of conscience, much like how he was during most of the manga, and that he was also very, very stubborn and unwilling to admit he was wrong. Feel free to disagree.
Next chapter will probably contain a part focusing on Mitsuki's strenuous attempts to undo Edo Tensei on Naruto. Mitsuki needs his time to shine; I feel so bad for making him such a peripheral figure in the story :( But his emotional turmoil is simply less potent than Boruto and Sarada, who are intimately connected to Naruto and Sasuke's fate.
On another note, with regards to the time span and intensity of events occurring and plotline, I've always imagined "What Might Have Been" to function more as a potential stand-alone movie than an arc - kind of like Blood Prison or Clash in the Land of Snow or Road to Ninja in terms of the main cast going to a foreign place and influencing crucial events there. Hope this clarifies some things!
Thanks for everyone's support so far! This story will have 4 more chapters left so keep your predictions/ questions coming via reviews and PMs! I honestly have no idea when the next chapter would be up: it may be in two weeks, it may be in two months - or somewhere in between. But know that I am very committed to seeing this story through and that it is my first multi-chaptered serious story, a fact that I am very proud of :)
Please leave your thoughts and comments in the reviews: I read every single one of them!