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When Sasuke hears the story for the first time, he finds himself too angry to breathe.
He’s sitting on a barstool early in the evening, a hard glass of alcohol in front of him. The rest of the nearby seats are empty, for which he is grateful. He isn’t in the mood for some ignorant civilian trying to strike up a conversation, not realizing who he is; some girl trying to flirt or some well-meaning adult asking are you old enough to be drinking?
He isn’t. He’s still two years shy of his twentieth birthday. But no one is going to refuse him; when you’ve fought in a war and made a career out of killing, refusing that same person a drink because they’re too young just seems ridiculous.
Today is his mother’s birthday—was his mother’s birthday, damn that past tense again (you’d think he would’ve kicked the habit after over ten years). Not that anyone knows, or would even care if they did. Who was Mikoto Uchiha to them? No one. Nothing. Not even worth a name on a memorial stone.
His memory is the only piece of her that survives.
He throws back his glass, appreciating the burn of the alcohol as it goes down his throat. Normally he has no taste for it, but some rare nights are an exception. He reaches for the bottle across the counter to refill his glass—then scowls the moment he hears someone walk up behind him.
“Sasuke,” Shikamaru says. “Mind if I join you?”
“Yes,” Sasuke responds bluntly. “I do.”
Shikamaru sits down anyway, because no one ever does what Sasuke wants. Sasuke sighs in resignation as his old classmate leans over the bar to order his own drink from the bartender.
“So what brings you here?” Shikamaru asks. “You don’t seem the drink alone type.”
Sasuke raises an eyebrow. “Don’t I?”
“Well, you’re definitely the alone type. You just don’t seem the drinking type.”
He isn’t wrong. Sasuke just shrugs, hoping his silence will speak for him and the other boy will take the hint.
Truthfully, out of all his former classmates who could have caught him wallowing in his sorrows at a bar, Shikamaru is probably the least detestable option. Sasuke can’t quite say he likes him, but he can at least say he doesn’t dislike him. Compared to the others, Shikamaru is actually… tolerable.
“So?” Shikamaru asks. “If you’re not a recreational drinker, what’s the occasion?”
Sasuke considers telling him to fuck off, then reminds himself he told Naruto he’d try to be better-mannered. He bites the words down.
“Bad day,” he says instead. Then, because it’s the mannerly thing to say, “What about you?”
Shikamaru is silent for a long moment, staring down at the amber liquid in the glass in front of him. “Mirai… she found a picture of Asuma-sensei today. She asked me who he was.”
Sasuke frowns at the unfamiliar name. “Mirai?”
“Kurenai’s daughter.”
“…Oh.”
Sasuke doesn’t know much about Asuma Sarutobi’s death, beyond the fact that it happened and the Akatsuki were responsible. He was off with Orochimaru by that point, or possibly hunting down his brother. There’s so much of his classmates’ lives that he missed, and honestly he’s never been too interested in filling in the blanks.
“She never got to meet him,” Shikamaru says. “Asuma. I tell her about him all the time. So does Kurenai. But… well, she’s barely two. She doesn’t remember a lot of what we say. It’s normal, but I guess it just hit me this time.”
Sasuke doesn’t say anything to that—doesn’t think he’s expected to. But he understands the feeling. Some years, his mother’s birthday will pass him by without him even realizing the date. On others, like this one, he spends the entire day wanting to break something—wanting to light the ground at his feet on fire and watch the entire village burn.
“How did it happen?” Sasuke asks. “Asuma? It was Hidan and Kakuzu, right?”
Shikamaru’s hand tightens around his glass. “Yeah.”
And somehow, Sasuke finds himself listening to the tale of how Team 10 found themselves up against the infamous Zombie Duo—and how their teacher lost his life protecting them. Shikamaru tells the story in the same measured tone of voice, not once lifting his gaze from the counter in front of him.
Sasuke doesn’t speak. He just listens. Though he initially detested the idea of company, he finds Shikamaru’s grief a welcome distraction from his own. Not very nice, but he never claimed to be.
He’ll do anything to forget the memories in his head: Itachi flicking batter at him as they tried to bake a cake. His father smiling for once. His mother wrapping her arms around him and kissing the top of his head—then snatching the lighter from his fingers when he nearly lit his hair on fire attempting to light the candles.
Happy birthday, Kaa-san.
Shikamaru talks about his anger afterwards, the need to make the Akatsuki pay, and Sasuke can intimately relate. He speaks of Kakashi going to bat on Team 10’s behalf, standing in front of the Hokage and arguing why they needed the chance to go after them, volunteering to go with them.
Sasuke stills at the story. His words are calm and quiet. “Kakashi… encouraged you to go after them. He helped you.”
Shikamaru nods. “Yeah. He said we were owed the chance at retribution—me, especially. He could see the storm in my heart. He thought it would give me closure.”
“Closure,” Sasuke repeats. His lips feel numb.
His hand tightens around the glass. It cracks, splintering like spiderwebs and cutting up his palm.
★
Sasuke remembers five years ago, sitting with his back against a tree and wire-string making it difficult to breathe. He remembers his sensei standing over him, so sanctimonious: Let it go. You have to forget about revenge.
(There will be nothing left afterward.
(Forgive me, Sasuke.)
He was right about that, at least.)
Sasuke remembers two years ago, standing wild-eyed with blood on his hands and a storm in his chest. His sensei dropping down in front of him, face filled with disappointment and disgust. Were you really going to kill her, Sasuke? How low you’ve fallen.
Sasuke wanted to scream. Sakura had tried to kill him first, but apparently that didn’t matter.
Kakashi had spoken the words again, knowing full-well what his precious village had done and not caring in the slightest: Forget about revenge.
Now, eight months after allowing himself to be dragged back to a place he swore he’d never return to, Sasuke feels his veins light up with a rage he hasn’t felt since charging at Naruto that final time.
He thought it would give me closure, Shikamaru says, and the glass in Sasuke’s hand cracks.
(Forget about revenge.)
Why is it different when it’s him?
★
Sasuke doesn’t give his fury time to cool. That would be a mistake. The raging fire in his veins comes so rarely these days, has been replaced by a heavy numbness that holds him beneath the water, so whenever he feels the familiar sharpness of his rage, he latches onto it for as long as it’s possible to hold on.
He rides the curling flames of it now, allows it to direct his feet. One look at the storm in his eyes causes the guards outside the Hokage’s office to move instantly out of his way, and Sasuke throws open the door without knocking or announcing himself.
Kakashi is sitting at his desk in his Hokage robes, two dark eyes visible beneath the rim of his hat. Iruka is across from him leaning over a document in front of them, and they immediately cease speaking when they see him.
“Sasuke,” Kakashi says warily, reading the fury present in every line of him. Sasuke can see the way he subtly tenses, on the defensive.
Sasuke does not attack. He does not yell, as he would have only a year ago. His voice, when he speaks, is calm—and all the more dangerous for it.
“Shikamaru just finished telling me an interesting story.”
Sasuke can see Kakashi wracking his mind, trying to think of anything Shikamaru could have said to cause the angry body language currently directed his way. “…What story?”
“Hidan and Kakuzu,” Sasuke says, still in that same calmly furious voice. He almost doesn’t recognize it as his own, and he realizes with a slight start that it sounds more like how Itachi’s voice sounded when angry than his. “They killed Asuma. You helped Team Ten hunt them down.”
Kakashi’s eyebrows pull down slightly, a puzzled expression on his face. “Yes. I did. Why are you asking me about that? What is this about?”
Sasuke grinds his back teeth, nails digging into his palms. “You argued for them. You said they had a right to vengeance.”
Kakashi’s face is one of hopeless confusion for half a moment longer, before realization slowly seeps into it. His eyes widen slightly, then the line of his shoulders becomes stiff.
Iruka looks between them with an uncomfortable but slightly concerned expression, torn between staying or excusing himself. “Rokudaime-sama…”
“Thank you for bringing these to me,” the man says, motioning toward the documents on the desk in front of him while not dropping his gaze from Sasuke. “You may go now, Sensei.”
Iruka gives both of them one last, uncertain glance. Then he bows his head respectfully and leaves the room. He closes the thrown-open door behind him, leaving Sasuke and Kakashi alone.
The two of them stare at each other for a long, silent moment. Sasuke’s expression is like stone, unflinching with fire flickering in his eyes, and finally Kakashi sighs, his shoulders slumping.
“Okay,” he says. “Let me hear it. I helped them in their revenge and not you. That’s what this is about, correct?”
Sasuke can taste his own chakra in the back of his throat—the sharp, static sizzle of lightning. “You approved their mission to go after Hidan and Kakuzu. You helped them. You thought it would offer them closure.”
“Sasuke—”
“So why is it different when it’s me? I guess vengeance is only justified when it’s government sanctioned.”
Kakashi winces, but a steely look appears in his eyes. “Do not speak to me like that. I know it might not seem like it, but the situations were different.”
Sasuke scoffs. “How?”
“Shikamaru, Ino, and Choji were older and more experienced by then. Konoha had more verified intel on the Akatsuki, so we were better prepared to go against them—we didn’t even know of the organization’s existence when Itachi and Kisame came crashing through the village looking for Naruto. We learned about them in the three years after that, discovered they were amassing Tailed Beasts, so hunting down their members became a priority—”
“And hunting down Itachi wasn’t a priority?” Sasuke demands. “After he slaughtered the most powerful clan in Konoha, no one thought catching him to be important?”
“Sandaime-sama knew he wasn’t actually an enemy. Of course no one was sent after him—”
“Tsunade didn’t know anything about that. You didn’t know.”
Kakashi frowns. “You’re saying you wish Konoha had sent agents after your brother?”
Sasuke’s jaw clenches. The man still isn’t getting it.
“Then,” he emphasizes, “yes. I would have. He was a missing-nin, wasn’t he? He slaughtered eight dozen of Konoha citizens in a single night. But no one was sent after him. Why? That didn’t strike anyone as wrong? As suspicious?” He shakes his head. “Then again, this village is abysmal when it comes to dealing with its actual traitors, too. Orochimaru roamed free for years—set up his shop right next door to Konoha, experimented and victimized hundreds of innocent people, and no one was concerned with catching him either. Not even when he murdered your own Hokage—may he rest in eternal, unending torment.”
His former sensei narrows his eyes. “Sasuke, careful. I understand your feelings toward the Third, but you can’t just—”
“You understand nothing! You never have!”
Emotions are bubbling under the surface of his skin, attempting to burst out from behind his ribcage. All the flames he’s attempted to smother these past eight months since he’s been forced back to this village—they’re flaring back up as if the dying embers have been dosed in gasoline.
It's like a floodgate has been opened. He can’t hold back the tide. He’s tired of expending all his energy on it.
“Do you even know what Itachi did to me,” he asks, “that day all those years ago when he came looking for Naruto? When he beat me down and nearly broke my mind?”
Kakashi is silent, not saying anything. He looks shocked by Sasuke’s outburst, stunned into speechlessness. Sasuke hasn’t raged at him like this in a while.
“He tortured me,” Sasuke says bluntly. “He showed me how weak and worthless I was, and then he made me watch him murder our parents on an endless loop. Just like when I was seven. I was a helpless, powerless child and he made me feel that way again.”
It makes something sharp and terrible twist in Sasuke’s chest, because he doesn’t like to remember that day. He doesn’t like to remember the harshness of his brother’s fists, the sharp cut of his eyes. He loves Itachi, he does, with his entire soul; and he doesn’t like remembering the ways he broke him apart.
He doesn’t like remembering that for all his love, his brother was inexcusably cruel. He doesn’t like the feeling that bubbles up in his chest sometimes—the realization that some part of him still hates his brother, that some part of him always will.
(How is it possible, to both love and hate the same person so deeply? He thinks he could live for a thousand more years and still not make peace with the feeling.)
“He came for Naruto, not me. He barely even glanced at me. He threw me aside like I was nothing.”
Kakashi’s face has paled, drastically. He stares at Sasuke now, his former self-righteous attitude stripped from him.
“I didn’t know,” he says quietly.
Sasuke scoffs. “Sure you did. He put me in the same coma he put you in. You knew he used the same genjutsu on me.”
“I didn’t know what he showed you.”
That, Sasuke considers, is likely true. He didn’t exactly share back then. But Kakashi didn’t ask, either.
And if he did know, would it have changed anything? Sasuke killed his own brother, discovered Konoha was the true killer of his clan, and still Kakashi told him to forget it. Forget it, like he didn’t forever stain his hands in his brother’s blood as a result of their deceptions.
(Let it go. Your family is dead, your brother is dead, and you wish you were dead too, but let it go. Forget it, forget it, forget it. Forget it like each draw of breath into your lungs doesn’t feel like choking on smoke, like you don’t hate each beat of your pulse because it reminds you you’re alive. Forget it, forget it, forget it.)
“Do you have any idea how it felt?” Sasuke demands. “He murdered my parents. My entire clan. He ripped everyone and everything I ever loved away from me. And you told me to just let it go—to let him go—when nobody was going after him. Nobody was chasing him. Nobody was doing anything, because nobody cared, no one except me.”
The Rokudaime is still sitting behind his desk, his grip tight on the edge of it. Knuckles bone-white.
Sasuke’s eyes sting. He tastes a storm in the back of his throat.
“That’s what you never understood. It wasn’t some selfish, vengeful desire to do the deed myself. I had to be the one to kill him, because I was the only one who would. And I had to leave, because you’d already made it abundantly clear you weren’t going to help me.”
Kakashi stands from his chair. His jaw is clenched, conflict in his eyes. “What could I have done, then?” he asks challengingly. “You were no match for Itachi then, and you know that. Encouraging you to go after him like I did with Team Ten… it wouldn’t have been the same. It would have been suicide.”
“You could have told me that you would help me get stronger,” Sasuke tells him. “That you would help me go after him one day. You could have told me that the village had people hunting for him. You could have told me literally anything rather than let it go, like my family didn’t even matter.”
Kakashi’s mouth becomes a thin line. His veiled hat throws his expression in shadow, making it difficult to read. “That… I was trying to—"
“And you did it again,” the Uchiha cuts him off, “three years later. Konoha ordered my clan killed—they manipulated and victimized my thirteen-year-old brother—and you told me to forget it. To let it go. As if I could. As if I should be expected to. Itachi was dead, gave up his life for a village that never deserved him, and I stained my hands in his blood for their lies but all you could preach about was Konoha's safety. You condemned me for my betrayal, but they betrayed me first.
“You don’t care about what happened to the Uchiha. You never have. No one has—not you, not Naruto, not Sakura, no one. I’m supposed to believe you when you say you care for me, but you have never shown it. You have never given one ounce of consideration for what I want, only what you do, because I hate it here, I can’t breathe, and if you really cared then you would never force me to stay, because it’s killing me.”
Finally, finally, Sasuke’s words dry up. His mouth snaps closed, teeth knocking together. There’s a ringing silence in the room.
The evening light slants in through the window. The Sixth stands there across from him, quite still, and doesn’t say anything. His expression is blank, inscrutable, and Sasuke feels a tell-tale wetness in his eyes. A metal chain tightening around his neck.
“I…” Kakashi seems to struggle with his words. He takes a hesitant step forward, his arm reaching out. “Sasuke—”
“Don’t,” Sasuke snaps, and the man freezes in place.
He spins around and flees the office, a storm at his fingertips and thundering in his head.
★
Sasuke finds himself in the forest near the Uchiha compound, where Itachi used to take him when he trained. He’s crying, tears burning his eyes and streaking down his cheeks, with his back against the trunk of a tree and his face pressed into his knees. His hands shake, clenched into the fabric of his pants.
He feels absolutely pathetic.
But he doesn’t regret a single word he said.
(He regrets the tears he let show. He regrets ripping himself so open, stripping himself so raw.)
It’s about half an hour later when Kakashi finds him, still sitting in the same position with his back against the tree. The rough surface is beginning to hurt him, but he doesn’t move. He hears Kakashi’s footsteps as he approaches—knows the man wanted him to hear them.
He isn’t wearing his official robes or hat anymore. He’s wearing his jounin uniform and hitai-ate, and Sasuke is reminded overwhelmingly of the day the man tied him against that tree with wire-string. Let it go. Forget about revenge. But Kakashi’s headband is straight now, not slanted, and both of his eyes are dark.
“May I sit down?” Kakashi asks him.
Sasuke shrugs, back teeth gritted. “You’ll do it anyway.”
But Kakashi doesn’t make any move to sit, wanting for Sasuke’s cue. After a few moments Sasuke grows annoyed with his standing there and says, “Fine. Sit.”
The man sits down next to him on the ground. Sasuke doesn’t look at him, but he can feel Kakashi looking at him. The tears have been wiped from his face, but no doubt his red-rimmed eyes, splotchy complexion, is obvious. Neither of them says anything for a long time.
“I can’t let it go,” Sasuke says finally. His jaw and fists clenched tight. “I can’t forget it.”
“Can’t?” asks Kakashi. “Or won’t?”
Sasuke considers that for a moment. “Both,” he says decisively.
Another silence, stretching out. The horizon over the trees is growing dark. Then, hesitantly, “I think perhaps I owe you an apology.”
Sasuke’s head snaps to look at the silver-haired man. “What?”
“I think I missed something fundamental all these years,” Kakashi says. “I think I’ve been looking at everything from a single perspective, completely blind to the difference of yours. I want you to explain it all to me, as you’ve seen it—the massacre, Orochimaru, Itachi, Konoha.”
Sasuke frowns. “You interrogated me after the war when you locked me up. I’ve already explained it all to you.”
“I wasn’t listening before. Not properly.” His hand moves between them, rests itself solidly on Sasuke’s knee. “I’m listening now.”
The teenager looks down at the hand on his knee, calloused and scarred. Uncertainly, he raises his eyes—eyes that are doubtful and wary, that haven’t dared to trust in over ten years. Kakashi looks back at him evenly, with both eyes, more genuine than Sasuke can remember ever seeing him. He squeezes Sasuke’s knee.
“Please,” Kakashi says. “Tell me again. Tell me everything.”
Sasuke hesitates for a moment—then he starts talking.