Chapter Text
“It’s a little surprising that he said no,” Inoichi murmurs to Chouza one day, standing on the porch of his house. Times like these are when he can see the appeal of Shikaku’s disgusting habit of filling his lungs with smoke. Well, they are shinobi, anyway. When they die, it won’t be from smoke inhalation , of all things. No.
“Is it?” Chouza ponders, genuinely wondering about that. “He met Minato a while ago, no? Found out about his family and everything, but then didn’t come back for another year.”
“Hm,” Inoichi hums in vague acknowledgement, but not quite agreement. “True enough, I suppose. I could reasonably say that he was, ah, busy , but even so, that….”
Chouza sighs and looks up at the sky, stars reflected in his pupils. “What do you think of him?”
It’s a loaded question. Uchiha Sasuke is obviously a complicated individual. Layers upon layers, impossible to discern any true emotion from him at a given moment, impossible to know what he’s thinking, and Inoichi knows minds better than anything else in the world. Uchiha has very few, if any, visible tells, and it’s… well, the lack of them says a lot too, in a way.
Despite all this, he can’t help but wonder where the hell the guy came from.
“I think,” Inoichi begins, “that whatever the hell he’s running from is going to catch up to him.”
“Some people are good at running,” Chouza comments idly, not really a counterpoint, just an observation. “Seems like he is.”
“Not if he stays here.”
“Will he?”
Inoichi has no clue. He doesn’t even think Uchiha himself knows.
“Suppose he’ll do what the rest of us will do now that the war’s over,” he shrugs, not entirely sure what else to add. It’s largely a joke, anyway. For some odd reason, he can’t seem to picture a blushing bride in Uchiha’s immediate future.
“I highly doubt that,” Chouza laughs goodnaturedly.
“At least he’s on our side,” he offers, grateful in ways even he doesn’t truly understand, not yet. The greater implications of an entire war being avoided solely because of the actions of one man isn’t something he really has a precedent for, though perhaps that’s a good thing.
“I’d drink to that!”
“You’d drink to anything.”
Sasuke grips reality like sand through his fingers. He burns brightly but rapidly, opening his palm to reveal crystalline glass in the middle. There is sand on the floor, there always is. There’s always something missing, a person he couldn’t save, something he was just too late to stop. His feet would sink into the floor if he stepped firmly enough, swallowed by the grains of his failures but cradling the glass gently. It is orange and pink and silver and red . Red like the fan he doesn’t wear on his back. Red like the eyes that ache in his skull when he sees familiar (not family, never again) heads of black hair. The piece of glass is heavy and burdensome but whole and alive. There is a heartbeat he cannot extinguish, no matter how much he wants to.
Sometimes he thinks that he deserves more than he got, but he can’t say if it’s punishment he craves or a deeper sense of justice for the life stripped from his fingers.
He wonders what he would say then, if he were to peer into the future. Arrogant and eleven, experienced in all the wrong ways. He wonders how he would be judged through the eyes of his youth, but then he doesn’t have to wonder at all.
The window in his apartment is cold, but it’s a relief to his skin. This apartment is nicer than anything he would have picked for himself, but he doesn’t want to think about what that says of his character.
There is lead in his feet, he thinks, or justifies, more accurately. His unwillingness to move is because his feet are heavier than normal, surely.
Surely.
If he lets his eyes slip shut and extends his grasp to the edges of the villages, he can find the person he needs to see the most (the least).
Itachi is in the compound, and Sasuke wants to see him. He hasn’t and he won't. Not yet.
There’s a part of him that thinks it’s too soon. Not enough time has passed between now and when there were fingers pressed against his forehead, warm and alive. It will always be too soon, perhaps.
Hours pass, most likely. His clock chimes several times. First 5, then 6, then 7, then 8, then 9, and he’s almost late.
He pulls himself away from the window, wiping away the condensation from his breath and skin. His things are packed, he doesn’t have to think all that much before he can leave.
The village is alive at this time. The shadows of war are gone from the faces of the civilians and the streets are light, airy.
He doesn’t dwell, he’s already late enough. He reaches the gates to find the ANBU team assigned to watch him. Not hiding, because why bother?
It’s easy to switch from the wallowing to the proper mindset for a mission. Everything is gone, pushed so far to the side that he couldn’t reach it if he tried, and neither can anyone else.
He leaves with an ANBU escort and a tangible force anchoring him to the village behind him.
( A leash, his mind whispers.
A promise, he replies, wondering how long he has to justify it to himself in order to believe it.)
Namikaze calls Sasuke into his office on a rainy Friday evening. Much too late to be anything other than urgent.
Sasuke appears in the Hokage tower with ease. It’s child’s play to override the sealing on the walls to prevent teleportation, and he gets to Namikaze’s office quickly. The man is sitting with a deep frown on his face and pages upon pages of what look to be personnel documents.
Namikaze doesn’t bother with pleasantries. He meets Sasuke’s eyes with a grim sort of acceptance that is beginning to become normal for the man. It’s disconcerting to see such a look in Naruto’s eyes, after all this time.
Sasuke is drawn from his thoughts when Namikaze hands him one of the files. “Read that.”
It’s a command that Sasuke doesn’t mind following. He’s curious.
The file is sparse, there’s clearly a lot of conjecture but it is, in essence, an explanation of a bastardized version of the Hyuuga seal. Sasuke immediately recognizes it as a juvenile version of the ROOT seal, before Orochimaru got his hands on it and twisted it into an even darker version of the slave contract it started as.
“From Danzou?” He wonders, not sure who else it could be. Danzou and Zetsu are dead, he made sure of that. They burned fully, leaving nothing behind.
“…I assume you’re familiar with it?” Namikaze sighs deeply, pinching the bridge of his nose. “I suppose it was silly of me to think that ROOT had disbanded when the Third had called for it.”
Sasuke pointedly says nothing.
It’s easy to forget, through the accolades and praise, that Namikaze is just a man. He was fed the same lies as everyone else and is having the wool crudely ripped from his eyes.
“Right,” the other man clears his facial expressions. “We’ll have to go through everyone, and I want you to make sure the Yamanakas are clean.”
Sasuke blinks, a little- no, very surprised to have been selected for this role. He’s hardly the most trustworthy man in the village, but then he supposes that no one is. Not anymore. Not with sleeper agents littering the halls and lurking in every corner , even after Danzo’s death. A time traveler might be Namikaze’s best option.
“All of them?” Sasuke asks, wondering how big of a task this is. It would anchor him further to the village, which is probably part of the point. For all that he is human, Namikaze Minato is far from stupid. An asset is an asset.
“No, just enough that they’ll be able to do the rest themselves,” he pauses for a moment before adding. “Once this is sorted, I have a different task for you, if you’re amenable.”
Sasuke raises an eyebrow in interest.
“I’d like you to retrieve Jiraiya of the Sannin for a mandatory hearing,” he says, face a mix of unreadable emotion.
Namikaze is not as soft as Sarutobi was. It doesn’t look good on the village for one of their supposed strongest to be parading around the Hidden Villages, not taking missions or reappearing in Konoha. It would have been a few years or so ago that Jiraiya began setting up his intelligence network, and he wonders if the man even made it back for Namikaze’s inauguration. Probably not, given the political disaster that was going on at the time.
It must sting, he thinks as he watches Namikaze’s neutral expression, that his mentor couldn’t bother to return for the biggest moment of his life.
Although this does make him wonder of Tsunade. She’s probably still in the village, but that timeline is a little wonky.
Orochimaru would also be around, then.
“A hearing?” Sasuke says, wondering what for. Namikaze’s eyes flicker but his face doesn’t otherwise change.
“I’ll give you the details once it’s necessary, but yes,” he nods, standing up and looking out over the village.
Sasuke nods and figures that’s all that needs to be said. He follows Namikaze’s gaze to the illuminated windows and shops in the village.
It’s not the Konoha he’s used to. These aren’t the streets he grew up in or the people he’s spent a lifetime with, but acceptance builds whenever he feels a flicker of Chakra that’s so close to something from his time but isn’t.
It’s staggering, sometimes. To think of how little he recognizes a lot of the names here, to consider the full implications of tragedy that occurred before his birth. The casualties of the Third Shinobi War were immense, followed by the Kyuubi, he knew that, and yet the fullness of the village isn’t something he had anticipated. The infrastructure that was built during this time is entirely gone in his, and so are the people. Wiped out.
By the time he tears his gaze away from the window, Namikaze is looking at him, not the village.
“I have to wonder what about the future was so bad to put that look on your face,” he says quietly, but still firm.
Sasuke gives him a sideways glance before turning his eyes back to the little people walking down the street. “The population never recovered after the Third Shinobi War and… following incidents.”
The silence that follows is contemplative.
“Does it bother you?” Namikaze asks eventually, leaning back on his desk. The man elaborates when Sasuke gives him a questioning look. “That no one will ever quite get it .”
Sasuke doesn’t have to think very long for that answer. “…No, it doesn’t.”
The lack of understanding is a good thing, maybe. Even if it’s a little odd to be in a place where not a single person has lived through the events he has. But then, if they understood completely, then this entire thing would be pointless.
Regardless, his experience is his alone and that’s for the best.
“I see,” Namikaze nods before his expression softens. He turns to Sasuke with an oddly bright expression. “My wife wants to meet with you.”
The words trickle into his ears, but he doesn’t hear them. There is need and there is want . People may need to meet him, or they’re in need of his services (the latter more than the former, generally) but nobody wants to meet him, not then, not now.
Kushina Uzumaki does.
Well, her son is the only person on the planet, alive or dead, he would claim as a friend, it follows that she would be just as odd, if not more so. She’s someone he knows very little about, Konoha is good at erasure and Kushina Uzumaki is a victim of it.
He says nothing for long enough that Namikaze speaks again.
“But we can talk about that later, if you’d like,” he allows, graciously not prodding into Sasuke’s silence.
He doesn’t want to talk about it later, he doesn’t want to talk about it ever again, but then he does want to meet her. It’s an odd feeling that slams into him all at once. He wants to meet her too, and he gets the sense that it’s as unusual for her as it is for him. He wonders how many people really want to talk to her. The Kyuubi Jinchuuriki, the last Uzumaki.
(Of course, they don’t know about Nagato or Karin yet. Sasuke’s heart does an odd thing when he thinks of Karin.
It feels something like guilt.)
“There’s no need for that,” he replies after allowing the moment to stretch for a beat too long. He flounders for something to say next for a moment. “Of course, you know that I know of the Kyuubi.”
“I wasn’t sure,” Namikaze pauses tenderly for a moment, face flickering through unreadable emotion. “I hope I haven’t misread the situation, but you have no problem with her… status, do you?”
“No,” Sasuke says, wondering if it would be appropriate to laugh. If there were to be anyone in the country right now who didn’t have a problem with Kushina being the Kyuubi ( Kurama , Naruto whispers) container, it would be him. Minato, of course, can’t know that. “There’s no problem.”
Namikaze nods as though he expected this, his shrewd eyes analyzing the situation. “Shall I tell her to expect you?”
Far be it for him to think that Naruto only got his stubbornness from his Uzumaki half.
Things are changing, they’ve already changed, it… wouldn’t be unnatural for Sasuke to change too, maybe.
“You may.”
Namikaze smiles, the first Sasuke’s seen in a while. “I’ll let her know.”
It’s nothing really noble that brings him to the Uchiha grounds. He doesn’t come to alleviate their concerns or put a smile on his father’s face. He doesn’t walk past the shell-shocked guards to see his mother’s stern face soften, no.
He takes a couple steps, a couple more, and stops.
There are people here, and his heart is shattering in his chest. It’s an odd feeling, one he hasn’t experienced in a while between the numbmissionfurynumb, but the ache in his soul that never left since that day burns brightly and tugs at his chest until it feels a little bit like dying.
It feels like a long time, but realistically, he stands there for maybe a minute before his body moves on autopilot to leave.
“Will you be back?” His mother. Quiet, as though the words slipped out. She's always been able to find him, no matter what.
(There was a part of him that thought she would find him, even after everything. That there would be a gentle embrace and a smile at the end of the tunnel, but there wasn't. He's never been able to deny the fact that, above anything else, he wanted to remember her voice.)
He can’t look.
Sasuke vanishes, mind suddenly torn to threads with the way she sounded.
He lands in his apartment feeling like a live wire. His vision is sharp, Sharingan are active, scanning for danger where there isn’t any. Isn’t there? Irrationally, he can't help but think that if that’s his mother, then Itachi’s just killed the clan.
Something burns, it feels like the hem of his clothes but smells like his skin. There’s a feverish intensity to his thoughts, but with nowhere to send them, it feels a lot like insanity.
His mother’s face, her voice, her headstone . As elegant as she was, but the cold slab of stone never could stand in for love. He wonders how long he’s going to make himself suffer like this. Is it on purpose? Some of it has to be. He guides his own thoughts, for the most part, there’s a strange sense of masochism by semi-intentionally leading his mind to the memories that hurt the most. Breathing becomes manual, something he has to think about doing in order for it to happen, but there are words of weakness whispering in his ears.
Distantly, he has the capacity to feel the shutters of his mind slamming down, rejecting the idea of vulnerability with prejudice. The sharpness fades, the Chakra seals he has are activated, recognizing the large output as unnatural and reacting accordingly.
Muscle memory brings him to the couch, exhaustion forces his eyes shut.
He doesn’t want to think of what his mother thought of him, couldn’t if he tried.
It’s not enough to give him a dreamless sleep.