One Week After the War
"I never thought I'd see this again."
It's the first time Itachi has spoken since they started journeying home. Orochimaru has a pardon to be in the village for two days for a debrief then he'll adjourn for a brief time to Uzushio, then to where ever he is now. Until then his Edo Tensei are travelling with him.
It's the ancient redwoods, not Konoha proper, that his brother is overwhelmed by. Sasuke has made this journey and is sympathetic but it has been a long time now since the brush of Hashirama's chakra in these great still woods has moved him. It is a home. Their home. The woods will remain even when all the dust of them has found a home somewhere else.
"Not long now," he murmurs. It is neither pleasing nor displeasing. That happens when you suspect you may have a future.
"What happened to you?" Itachi's body rolls with his movement on the horse. Impatient thing rushing forward. His brother is a good horseman. Gentle hands. Sasuke is just out of time moving back when his brother moves forward. It's calm. He feels calm. Itachi clears his throat but his question is still mostly gravel, regret and hopeful curiosity. "How did we get here?"
Like unhooking his soul, like spilling open the pages of a great unfinished novel: Sasuke begins to talk.
--
Two Weeks After the War
He has forgotten nearly every single bad thing about living with Itachi. Thankfully his brother is happy to remind him.
Two weeks later and Sasuke's body still aches with chakra burn. His skin feels like it's drying out, taking all his flesh with it. Sakura has assured him that this is not bad, that it will take months for what Indra did to eek out, but until it does he is on bed rest. He needs salt and fruit and the tea that his mother made for the returning shinobi after they'd been gone from home too many months. Salt is easy as is fruit. The tea had been hard to procure and harder to make. Sasuke, for all the years he spent half forgotten with the women folk, never learnt to make the tea. Somehow Itachi did not learn that the sharingan is matrilineal. Did not learn the truth of the Uchiha heart. But did learn to make the tea.
Hot cinnamon and liquorice tea is the only thing that soothes his headaches. Of all the two sided gifts of his brothers, this is the one he is most resentful of.
The great blue-brown stone that makes up his kitchen counter is covered in icing sugar and the debris of Itachi's sandwich. Being arrogant and infuriatingly right all his life Itachi has the silly idea that all he needs to do is try something to be good at it. Hence the sugar and the fruit and the bowls in the sink. Measuring cups sit on the floor, on the shelves and on the stone. Lying face down on Sasuke's marble pastry slab is Itachi, arms crossed over his head.
Sasuke slurps his two minute ramen. That was all he was allowed to make in his kitchen.
Itachi groans. "Will you stop?"
Sasuke shrugs. Then he slurps louder.
"Such a brat." His brother sits up, long fingers tap-tap-tapping on the bench. He looks grim, determined and unbearably himself. "Tell me how to make the pie?"
--
Two and a Half Weeks After the War
Hinata was at the War to End All Wars as a field coordinator. She told people where to go and what to do when they got there. She is famous now for refusing to follow the Earth Daimyo's order to retreat directly into a trap. When the Zetsu came, when the whole world turned to cinders and the man next to you strangled in smoke, Hinata saw the only viable exit strategy. It was Ino who had it done but it was Hinata who saw. In the closing strokes of the war it was Hinata -with Uzushio help- who constructed a sealing trap for one of the Zetsu for interrogation.
"I don't suppose," Hinata muses as she compulsively folds Itachi's laundry because Sasuke is smart enough to hide his, "that anyone considers my preferences when writing marriage proposals."
"Hn." Now there is a topic he's not touching with a ten foot pole.
"Hmm." She reaches for a sprig of rosemary to tuck between the folds of Itachi's one nice shirt. It is actually Sasuke's by way of Karin but sharing is caring, and anyway, Itachi in his ex-whatever Karin is clothes is funny. "Do you want to go into law?"
"No."
"No?"
He rolls his eyes. "Why?"
"We talked about it before the war." She's gotten his shirts, damn it. Now he's going to smell like lavender. "You could just not use my apartment as a laundry stop then this wouldn't happen. Did the war change something?"
"No." He says without a care to what query posed. "I want this over with. All of it."
Hinata nods and tucks sage into the bends of his sweatpants.
--
Three Weeks After the War
"You wanna what?" Aguni Satoko asks. There's crumbs all the way down her blouse gathering on her very pregnant belly.
Lots of babies around right now. "I want to draft a law." Sasuke says slow.
"You can't." Satoko replies. "Your citizenship is limited. And that's not how law works."
"No I do." There's a very un-shinobi gasp and slide across the wood floors of the Civilian Floor in the Tower. Hinata grabs his arm to steady herself shooting him an unimpressed look. "Sorry, his legs are very long."
Sasuke raises an eyebrow. "Hyuuga Hinata will be the name on the bill but it's my idea." He outlines it in a succinct paragraph.
Satoko actually gasps. "I'm sorry you want to do what? "
"My family is dead because of these sorts of laws." In a roundabout way. An Itachi that grows up to, who knows, take over Chizuru's bakery, is not one who is asked to kill his entire family. "There's more, outlined in our proposal-" Hinata produces a folder full of evidence and speculation. It's as thick as her wrist.
"Oh," Satoko looks upon the folder as she has her pork buns. "I was going to say yes anyway? This is basically my wildest dream. But thank you. For the context." She pats his hand maternally.
"Will that need to be entered in some kind of motion?" Hinata says intelligently, every bit the heir.
"No?" Satoko squints at them. "Neither of you have been to civilian court?"
He shrugs. "No."
Hinata shrugs as well. "I've watched it? On TV."
Satoko hides a smile behind her hand. "Right. So. This is a cross divide motion. That means that you need someone to defend it on the shinobi side. I have a few recommendations." She reaches over for her notepad.
Sasuke stops her. "I have someone."
"It has to be a Konoha native." Satoko gently removes his grip with a look almost like wonder.
"He's native alright." Sasuke mutters. "I can do that."
Hinata nods. "What do you need from us?"
"Access, time and money. I don't know how to word this to get it past the Kage's -and it'll be more than one who wants a look, you're both very popular."
Forty five minutes they have a months worth of face to face time to discuss the finer details. Hinata bumps him gently on the arm. "Do you think I'm as popular as you were?"
He would love to say so, let that be passed on, but, "probably not."
--
He sends the letter, a long mean thing with many pointed references to failures living and dead. It ends with-
Do you want to actually make a difference or do you want to keep half assing this?
--
Jiraiya says yes a week later.
--
One Month, One Week After the War
One of the rescue kids collapsed at his remedial schooling. Nine more followed after. Sasuke remembers bolting for the door with white in his ears but nothing about the travelling. When he arrives to Hinata's hideaway on the Inuzuka properties he remembers that a) he is not meant to be here ever and b) he is not wearing pants.
Hinata, Karin and Inuzuka Hana glare at him.
"You couldn't put on pants?" Karin scowls. "It's chakra burn, Sasuke. They're not working missions and they don't have natural regulators. Danzo didn't see a need, I guess. It's burning them from the inside."
He knows that feeling all too well. "I'll teach them fire techniques."
Karin's brow furrows. "I don't mean literal fire-"
A soft, feminine hand lands on his shoulder. He just about jumps out of his skin. Hana's eyes are very, very soft. "I don't think he did either. Don't worry. I'll get the tea then, shall I?"
Despite assurances Sasuke does not cease worrying. He takes Kiba's pants without complaint, takes the tea without thanks and works himself up to such a lather that Karin politely tells him to stop making her seasick with his chakra. Even weeks after Indra used it to burn the Zetsu it remains potent and difficult to control.
Hinata schedules staggered appointments with the Hyuuga doctors against her family's wishes. It will cost too much they say, as if you can put a price on a child's life.
(You can, it's about 270,000 for civilians.)
It'll cost too much, they say, so Sasuke throws what remains in the Uchiha coffers behind it. What does he care? He's eaten rat before and Itachi's dead. Living Uchiha to spend it on is a blessing.
Each kid has the same problem with the same lack of solution. Little Amiko, one of the only girls in the Uchiha clutch, sits with her feet swinging on the table. She's painfully of Naomi's line, a twin to the one he receives from his father. Their sharingan is strong in healing.
She's spent the entire time naming the creatures on the wall. Her voice is clear as a bell.
"What about the cats." Karin says. When it became obvious that Sasuke was only going to get less stable until there was a solution she stayed behind in Konoha. Tsunade is furious. "Nadeshiko has the contract but they're self sustaining summons, just give each kid a cat to take the edge off. They don't even have to like each other, 'cus it's self sustaining and there's no range problems." Karin is a little drunk, due to meeting with Terumi for lunch. This does not make her wrong. Again, Tsunade is furious.
"Kitty?" Amiko asks and that's it, she's getting a kitten.
Of course it's Moon Cat of the lavender fur and the pushy nature that takes to her. Amiko picks her up and shows her to Sasuke. "This is Tsuki."
He bends down slowly -you can't move quick around them, they scare so easy, and he would know- and pats Tsuki on the head. "Yes it is."
Amiko beams at him.
"You cannot possibly have known," he tells Sora later as he spoons sashimi onto a plate, the cats are eating better than him. "that I would end up with twenty two family members with post traumatic stress related chakra leakage."
The cat preens and purrs and is generally unhelpful. Sasuke is required to be grateful because it is a save completely out of nowhere, but boy is it begrudging.
--
One Month, Three Weeks After the War
Last night Satoko filed her charges. This morning Danzo was arrested. This morning Sasuke sits in the Tower ready to give his statement to the investigators.
Karin approaches, also here to give a statement, a tall figure with dark hair and shockingly pale blue-green eyes following at her shoulder. Karin has a coffee in one hand, a pad in the other and her Kage coat draped over her shoulders. Underneath is a slightly more modest version of her usual attire. She still has the shorts and thigh highs but the shirt is a wrap style intricately embroidered with sea flora, high quality ninja mesh underneath. The hat is hanging down her back on a piece of green string.
"What did you do to yourself now?" Karin flicks a page disinterestedly. "Can't take you anywhere."
Sasuke snorts. "Aren't you in love with me?"
Karin sits down on the chair next to him, she smiles at her bodyguard who assumes a ready position. Sasuke assess quickly. Three blades, scarred hands, he wants to say that they're male but there's a suggestion there of the kind of flexibility kunoichi have to use. Doesn't matter. They'll do.
"You take me to the worst parties," Karin relaxes in the chair stretching out her legs. A nearby chunnin almost walks into a wall.
"I never took you anywhere," Sasuke replies, copying her relaxed position.
"No shit," she snorts, "I was always the one doing the leading."
"Look at you now." Sasuke says almost mockingly.
"I've got a standing army and you've got a nin-cat infestation."
Sasuke laughs quietly.
Karin smiles at him. "I'm proud of you. This is- This is a good thing."
"If it works."
Karin falls to seriousness. "Sasuke if you don't die before you walk on that floor we've already won."
He struggles with that still. With the thought that success is not defeat of an enemy but confrontation of it. So he teases, "We?"
Before Karin can lay him flat for daring to insinuate that she is not 100% behind him at all times Sakura comes barreling down the hallway coffee in hand. She goes from determined kunoichi to vaguely distracted groupy in a second.
"Oh, Karin!" Sakura smiles brightly.
"Oh, you." Karin says bewildered. "What are you doing here?"
"It's good to see you!"
Karin takes her glasses off to rub them on her shirt surreptitiously. "Okay. Wow, no. Stop."
Sakura pouts. "But it is good to see you."
Karin frowns, putting her glasses back on. "I refuse to say the same to you."
Sakura laughs good naturedly and continues down the hall. There's a particular gait to her walk that eleven year old Sasuke still lives in fear of.
Sasuke nudges Karin, leaning down to hide his voice. No one would ever believe him capable of teasing. "Should I save the date?"
"You should shut your mouth. " Karin hisses.
--
Four Months After the War
Seven of the kids are safe to be outside of the Inuzuka compound. Amiko, Umeko, Hiroshi, Eito, Arata, Shunsuke and little Shisui, named for the cousin whose DNA he shares.
Sasuke's house is not small but neither is it large enough to contain nine people. Still, they're trying. Eito, the eldest at twelve, holds little Shisui in his arms. The boy is two and quiet. He's bonded to Toshiro, a nin-cat whose warm brown coat belies both his age and his temperament. Shisui was too young to chose so the cats chose for him. Sasuke tried to have an opinion but was overruled via Sora's tail in his mouth.
There's finger food on the tables. Boxes of blankets and soft things to touch across Sasuke's expensive chairs. Outside Itachi has been meticulously painting and planting a small garden. He's also cleared a small place for target practice.
"Theirs was no peaceful childhood." Itachi says mildly. "I would know."
The kunai are real but so are the fat red strawberries and Sasuke's dubiously composed 'party mix'. He'd been treated to a terrifying yet inevitable non-consensual drinking party with all of Sakura's friends. She doesn't want him but she loves him and love means sharing your open living and dining space with five kunoichi and more on call nurses than he could count. There haven't been any songs about sex or drugs but they will come. He knows they will.
Arata comes to sit quietly in the corner of the kitchen. He has a book He talks little and looks like a miniature of his father, eye bags and all. In twenty years he'll look exactly the same as Sasuke's father did when he died.
The kids are a mix of cousins, nieces and nephews and throwbacks to more than a hundred years ago. Danzo had Tobirama's obscene collection of body parts, plus Akatsuki's resources and Orochimaru's not insignificant contribution. What they didn't have is the knowledge hidden away in blood bound boxes. The sharingan is not insert tab a to slot b. It is hard to create, hard to avoid serious complications and hard to awaken. The women of his family have conferred for generations about what it would take to produce someone like Madara and then how not to lose that strength in the next generation. Sasuke's prodigious strength comes from centuries of careful planning not some broken levelling system.
What all those men lacked was the ability to understand the mothers of his mother.
Not that Danzo cared. He burnt resources trying every combination possible. He has little clones of his close cousins. Three of Michiko: two girls, one boy. Near none of Naoko's line, a frustration he's sure for someone like Danzo who knew what it could do. He has a throwback to Misu, a line thought to have gone two hundred years ago, and although he doesn't give a fuck if any of the kids carry on the sharingan, he thinks the world might want that one. Misu of the Gentle Flame, the only sharingan that grew instead of destroyed. He writes down Hashirama's words for that boy, And this said by the God of Shinobi to our greatest ancestor: 'If you think it came with no cost then I'm afraid that makes you the fool, my friend. You know better than that. And as long as you think you can control it rather than work with it, it'll seek to control you.' If you find the Gentle Fire remember it. I don't think that power can come without that cost.
"Uncle." Severe little Hiroshi asks. "May we go outside with Uncle Itachi."
" May we," Shunsuke, a literal child devil, asks. "I've already been. "
And he probably has. Itachi can make penance by dealing with that. Eito carries little Shisui outside to watch Shunsuke drive Hiroshi into an early grave. He speaks to his siblings the least having already detached himself from the idea of family, but he talks to Shisui constantly. His constant stream of consciousness is the background to all the children's laughter. He talks to Sasuke too but only about food.
Sasuke isn't traitor, beloved, returned, redeemed here. He's Sasuke: probably our Uncle, weird, with all the cool music and no job.
Someone told one of the other kids what work was. They'd been fascinated by the idea that if they did something they got something. Sasuke had apparently mucked it all up by being a PTSD riddled veteran with a pension who spent his days slowly reclaiming the lost knowledge of his clan and recording it for future generations. This was not a job, a rare solemn Shunsuke bravely told him, real jobs involved fire and damsels and orders to kill from higher powers. He seemed truly sorry to tell Sasuke this but Sasuke's bullshit radar is pretty sensitive.
His music collection is vast now. Some he's collected himself via Konoha's music stores and second hand shops. Some he has received from far off shores -Haru's continuing insistence on education. He got all of Naruto's inherited record collection because Naruto doesn't care for music at all. A fact he still finds baffling. Kushina had a box of loose leafed music sheets haphazardly saved that he sends off to Karin. Minato had a real wild streak: a box of early hard rock gathered specifically because Jiraiya found it grating and unpoetic. Kakashi is fond of audiobooks, shocking, and jazz. Sakura likes classical but has willingly gone to two metal concerts with him. Hilarious all around. Hinata likes very old fashioned pieces but otherwise prefers silence like Naruto.
Of his overseas friends Karin likes pop music, Suigetsu likes funk and Juugo doesn't care but prefers music with folk stories over anything more modern. Giri is held hostage by protest music and Haru's unseemly love of mumble rap. Sasuke listens, because arguing about what good music is, is their relationship now, but he has yet to receive a mixtape he didn't want to argue about.
Someday when your head is much lighter, plays from his half broken cd player on the windowsill, someday, yeah, we'll walk in the rays of a beautiful sun.
It is sunny in his kitchen, through the wide window he can see Itachi correct Hiroshi's hold. On the table is a cup of warm jasmine tea. Arata mutters the words he doesn't know under his breath. His cat, a tortoiseshell with notched ears rumbles next to him.
Someday.
The upstairs toilet flushes. Umeko holds her mirror images hand as they walk down the stairs. Sasuke's first floor bathroom is out of commission thanks to one of Shunsuke's infamous pranks. Less sure of herself than her sister Umeko hums - um, Ami, careful on the stair, it's slippery. Good! Another one ganbatte! - Amiko is a half year younger and holding up well under her elder's overbearing insistence on help. Amiko has had the hardest journey to equilibrium, something Sasuke has heard at length about from Tsuki. All her kind-of siblings watch her carefully. It reminds him of his long lost home in the best way, the only way that doesn't hurt.
He waits until they're at the bottom of the stairs before he kneels down to talk. "Are you okay?"
Amiko smiles at him as she always does. "My sister wants to play the first tape again."
That's confusing. All his tapes are numbered chronologically but he can't recall playing it. One of the cats -a buff thing called Bo- said they'd been 'borrowing' from it since the first time Shunsuke visited a few weeks ago. Sasuke had been in a mood to reminisce about years long gone, when the discovery of guitars felt like a whole new world. He could have been playing that first one. He's played it a lot.
Umeko looks at the floor. She's the softest of the lot for all that she's named herself for the adventurer of the Uchiha family.
He cocks an eyebrow, smirks, but does as he's bid. Umeko asks to skip the first song, then the second, then the third.
She huffs, "Oh, move!" And muscles Sasuke out of the way. With a nimble leap she's sitting on the edge of the sink skipping straight to what she wants.
"There." Umeko declares. A sure voice from years ago at a time Sasuke wasn't sure of anything sings: At the bottom of the sea, you'll find me drinking deep. "That's what I meant."
Shunsuke sticks his head in from the backyard where he has been diligently insuring Sasuke will sleep with one eye open for whatever terror lurks there. "What is it with you and this sad stuff! Uncle, tell her to play something happy!"
Amiko leaps to her sister's honour. "She wants to listen! It's fine!"
There's a hole in my ship that you'll never fill, Sasuke sings along, And I'll wait 'cause I've got time to kill. Umeko joins him, and if Amiko's voice is bell like it's her sisters that truly arresting. Haunting and low even at her age, like all the woman in the stories of old. Konoha has little use for musicians but there are courses in the Capital and even in Suna. If music is something that will make his nervous little niece happy there are ways to give it to her.
"Oh great." Shunsuke makes a deeply disgusted noise. "Uncle likes sad stuff.''
From the backyard he hears the long disused noise of Itachi's laugh.
--
Five Months After the War
In Itachi's story there is only one truth: Sasuke must live so Sasuke must kill him.
Paths fork and diverge. Enemies are found, allied and betrayed, but it is this that he comes back to. He did everything he could to keep Sasuke to his plan. And it was everything. Every pain, every torture, every doubt and lie pressed into Sasuke's soul until the truth nearly killed him. That Sasuke didn't die from it was an accident and partly a then-strangers disinterest in following Itachi's plan.
So here they are now, a failed fratricide and a refused path later, watching the youngest Uchiha cautiously walk around Sasuke's walled in backyard. Little Shisui is the only one here today. Hinata had gotten wind of another shipment even all these months after Danzo's arrest. It's a simple pickup, all above board, a crop from a bunch of civilians who thought they might buy an army of their own. The sameness of the children scares them and anyway, the age of shinobi is over now.
The eldest had insisted on going to show the children they were safe. As they are still considered shinobi of Konoha and not children of Fire they only needed the permission of the Hokage. Tsunade decided it would be fine. Might even be closure. Sasuke may disagree but he is a private citizen and Itachi is dead.
Eito had been livid about the order, the only one of them who didn't want to go, but he went to support Shunsuke who still cries when he thinks about anything further back than the last year. Shisui was placed into Itachi's arms with a firm nod and his favourite apple slices.
There is a pot of tea between them and their mothers pie waiting to be sliced into.
Sasuke pours for his brother. Itachi slices eleven identical pieces.
A kitten with black ears sits on his lap watching her partner. Shisui falls over. Sasuke almost leaps from his seat. Itachi, who had seen the fall coming, is still as water in his. Shisui gets up again and tries again. Upon the wall with a plush weasel toy in his mouth, is Sora, his golden fur reflecting in the waning sunlight. Itachi closes his eyes and takes one long final breath.
"I will miss you." Itachi says. "And I hope I will not see you again for a very long time."
"Don't worry." Sasuke promises, blowing across his tea. "You won't."
Sora walks the last metre of the wall with Shisui. Shisui completes his circuit of the backyard, falls on his ass and promptly sticks the ear of his favourite stuffed toy in his mouth. Itachi releases a breath and closes his eyes for the last time.
There's a wind that blows across from the west every evening at sunset. It takes the ashes out into the woods to rest forever.
--
Five Weeks, One Day After the War
Sasuke isn't eating again. He's day drinking. Again. The shape of his pain is different but the body knows the score. When he is lost this is who he is: a listless wandering drunk. The kids are on a trip out of Konoha today while Satoko does some lawyer badassery. He has fourteen hours before he has to try again to be a whole human. He is less messy than he has ever been but pain is loss is pain. One more day and he really does put it all down. One more day lying on his back by the river and he makes good on his promise to Itachi. No rivers, no booze, no what if what if what if.
Naruto, of course, finds him. He lies down on the edge of the river next to him. "You can't carry their grief forever."
"One more day won't hurt anyone." He whispers to the crook of his arm. Naruto doesn't hear him, which is pretty much the point.
Naruto harrumphs. He lies still. The kind of still that means a conversation.
Today, huh?
"Did you think it all ended with you becoming Hokage?" He can't help but smirk at that, for all of Naruto's growth and conviction he still doesn't account for the aftermath. "What do you do with the people you can't beat up until they see your point of view?"
"Asshole." Naruto growls out attractively. "I can beat up anyone."
But can you convince them when their heart truly is gone? When, like me, they needed space to be okay. "Your conviction didn't bring me home." Sasuke places a hand on his best friend's leg. Naruto looks up at him with wide blue eyes, almost pleading with him not to say it. "I did that myself."
"Sasuke..." His wide blue eyes fill with tears. "I-"
"I brought myself home so that I could talk to my mother one last time before I went back to Lightning and killed myself where I buried Itachi. That was why I came back."
"Why didn't you tell me?" It's edging demand but not quite there.
So he answers. "Because between then and now I found enough to keep me going." Sasuke sighs letting all his tension go. Shavasana. Something he learnt from their newest girl, little Hoshiko. "Some of that you will never agree with me on. I can't shoulder everything with you and I don't expect you to do the same for me. Can you accept that?"
"We're stronger together."
Depends on what you mean by strong. "Maybe. But what you want most in the world destroyed my family. That's never going to change."
"Sasuke. I can be a better Hokage-"
"Not what I meant," Sasuke shakes his head loose of Jinta's writings, of the desperate hope of Konoha and the Uchiha. Madara's lonely plea for them to protect themselves from their worst attribute: the ability to love entirely and unselfishly. "I know you can. I believe in you and I would serve you if that would fix it. The world is broken Naruto. Every last bit of it. Fixing this little bit of it will help but things like Giri will still be necessary. Checks and balances."
Rueful now, he says, "Nothing I can say?"
"You know I can't stay. Not the way you want me too. I never could." Sasuke struggles with it. Like always. Even if Naruto had fetched him back there was no more Team 7. It's not fair to any of them. He can say it now. He has to say it now. "But I'm not- I'm not leaving you. I need you to be able to tell the difference between what's leaving you and what's leaving this. " Maybe that's what he always wanted, secretly. "You I couldn't leave if I tried, you're an anchor around my neck." Naruto splutters, so he adds. "And I'm happy to have you. You, I want. But I wasn't joking when I said I was done being a shinobi. I'm done. "
Naruto smiles solemnly. "I'm not."
"Then we work with that."
Anger is just love, left out, gone to vinegar. And forgiveness is water in the home river, looped around their joined hands. Oh, the things they could have been. Winding roads that have no end. But this is what they are. A man who burnt out the last of his family legacy on a battlefield, made lame by his love of poetry and music, with no weapons to raise that aren't words. A once orphan who still holds the slipping strings of fate in his hands; the Will of Fire as it should have been. Too many dreams that came true in a way that means they will never be the same again.
Naruto sighs. "I want to bridge the gap between the shinobi and the civilians. My dad had some plans...but it's hard to get them to listen."
"I'm listening." Sasuke says sincerely. Then adds, "but only for the next thirty minutes and then you pay me in dates and dinner."
--
Five Months, Two Weeks After the War
"Because in a perfect world," Hyuuga Hinata says, light bulbs flashing all around her. He forgets sometimes that they have a common ancestor. Not today, with her in a pale purple and red kimono, those flashing lights making fire dance at her edges. The wide pavillion steps of the Courthouse make a perfect podium. Around them are the shinobi of Konoha and, to his surprise, the people of Konoha. He spies his grocer, his florist, the sulky teenager he is in a bidding war with over a recording from one of Haru's friends shows. Reporters, politicians and flashing winks of genin. "I would not exist. I would not be paid to murder someone. I would not be trained to torture someone. It would not be a matter of course that I, being of age at the time of my 11th birthday, be put into a position where I must fight for my life against people twice my age or, god forbid, against a child younger than myself." Hanabi abruptly tires to stalk forward only to be yanked down by her cousin. Hinata's eyes do not linger on the commotion. "In a perfect world my sister would never have beaten me to prove her own worth, in a better world my cousin would never have nearly succeeded in killing me to prove his right to his own existence. This has been a long time coming but now is the time to stand. Now is not just the time to say this far and no further, nor the time to condemn dead men for actions we have all suffered for, now is the time to draw a line, to build a castle on it, a legacy, and then to defend it as best we can."
Dressed in an altered version of his father's formal police uniform Sasuke feels if not out of place, certainly out of time. The old Courthouse was staffed by Uchiha and with their disappearance has fallen into the ever expanding hands of the Aburame. It was one of the deeds that Sasuke has spent countless hours worming out of the hands of real estate agents. His old plans to release the Uchiha properties five years after his death an unexpected boon. Now that he won't be slitting his wrists on a mountain top people are willing to negotiate. Apparently his great-grandfather lived for well over eighty years and even though he has lived several lives Sasuke is only in his early twenties. He'd given it over to the Konoha Heritage Foundation on the strict condition it be made ready for use as soon as possible. He'd been willing to wait weeks. It had taken mere days.
Hinata gives him a look, gesturing at his hair. He's styled it as he used to: his unruly bangs loose, two winding braids to pull the rest of the mass back from his head and one high ponytail at the back to keep it off his neck. Naruto has already, at length, made the usual nadeshiko comments.
The only difference, really, is his mother's pearl hair piece reset into a hair cuff thing. A present from Kakashi who had somehow learnt of all he said to Hashirama. Wearing one's mother's heart in their hair is a nonsensical metaphor, even if it is probably a very Uchiha one.
Hinata, funnily, deeply fucking hates it. Ostentatious he's heard. Impractical he's heard. Funny, from a woman who maintains ass length straight locks that smell just faintly of chamomile, the fucking hypocrite.
Later they're squashed close enough together that Hinata's tapping out an unhappy rhythm on his forearm.and he's spitting chamomile hair out of his mouth every third breath. It's three hours with only Jiraiya standing for them. Danzo cannot be questioned in open court. Something that makes Satoko angry and Sasuke watchful. There is more here than missing children and child weapons and child sacrifice. Something that makes the Kage nervous.
Karin opens the door to allow them back in. As a Kage she is not his friend. As his pick for a once in a generation miracle she risks signing bad behind her back. If Hinata sees she is too smart to comment.
When they get to their side of the court Jiraiya is scowling. The table is a mess of papers and photos. On the other side Danzo sits quietly, table empty.
"We're losing, badly." Jiraiya throws his big arms around the two of them, drawing them close enough to murmur. "He's got Wisteria Papers on at least two of the Kage's. They're going to need a bigger shield or a clearer way to conviction. Most of what could be in them will come up in the Madara investigation. They can spin that, but wherever it ties into this means they won't risk it."
"Can't they be excused?"
"No." He shakes his massive head, all that white hair making his tired red rimmed eyes stand out. "Simultaneous agreement or bust."
Sasuke and Hinata share a look. They'd been hoping to save this, because when they'd laid it out before Satoko she'd decided they would have more luck with a series of cases rather than a definitive one, but if they don't win this then what's the point? Hinata sucks in air. "The Summer of Sun."
Jiraiya jerks back. "The Summer of-" he leans back, roaring with laughter. "Carry on, Hyuuga."
Hinata defers to him.
He looks across the battlefield of the courtroom and sees the whole history of his people. A thousand years of standing across from each other as enemies and just as long staring at the backs of those strong enough to lead you through hell. Jinta is right. Pure democracy can never make you feel as loyal, as seen, as someone you have killed for. He chances a glance at A and comprehends the loss of someone like Fuyuki. If she were here he would tell her he finally, finally understood what it meant to her to stop being a soldier. No person is one thing but a knife is a knife no matter how well loved.
You can't hold the world hostage until it stops spinning on hate and murder and blood but you can divert it a little, again and again, until all the rivers shape the world anew.
Behind him sits rows and rows of people affected by Danzo and his zeal to protect Konoha. Karin, too, sits just behind him. The only one of her stature not taking the more neutral seating in the balcony. Tsunade is centred, dressed conservatively with her signature lip colour drawn on perfectly. On her left is A blowing a bubble with some gum. To his left is Gaara quietly reading his papers, mumbling under his breath. To Tsunade's right is Terumi eating nuts from a bowl keeping up a light conversation with Oonoki's aid and heir, standing behind the man himself at the end. Oonoki is in the middle of handing over his hat so his chosen successor is allowed to sit in. There's every chance it will be her that casts the vote . Dosa is here too, at a level seat to the side, being neither a leader or a major power. He's got a typewriter. The emissary for Giri who are using this to build their case against Madara. Behind all of them is the Yin Yang symbol of chakra
The bell rings. Everyone but him sits. The Kage's resume being the closest things their countries have to gods.
His mouth is dry with history. "You can't say there isn't precedent."
"Excuse me?" Oonoki says, " Who are you?"
"Uchiha Sasuke on the floor," Dosa says flatly, "recognised by Giri."
Tsunade glances at him. "Konoha seconds."
"Suna acknowledges." Gaara frowns, eerie eyes flick between the other Kages.
"And who is this precedent, boy?" Oonoki glares at him.
"I am." The Uchiha to the River, he thinks, The Senju to the Mountain. "And so are you."
"Oh?"
"Our forefathers were bandits and mercenaries who decided to live their life by the ideals of peace and protection. What peace meant to the men of old is different." He talks, a little, about Kazue and her fascination with civilians playing at war. What innocence means to those who weaned themselves on bloody mothers milk. "And we set the terms too high. It doesn't have to be a leap into the unknown. It can be a, a cessation of a kind of power."
A snorts. "That didn't fucking work, did it, or did I imagine that war last year?"
He narrows his eyes and tries to take the sting out. "You don't abandon something just because it didn't work the first time." It's harsh, an indictment, but hell if he didn't try to make it softer.
Silence resonates in the room.
"A Uchiha with political teeth," A murmurs, "it's been a damn long time coming."
Sasuke does not say anything, although it is a struggle. "The Summer of Sun." He nods to Hinata. She stands and speaks for them all.
--
Six Months After the War
"I'm leaving." Sakura fiddles with her necklace. It's a pretty thing laden with charms. Ino threatened to have him arrested if he didn't contribute. His is the pink-red ruby cut into a sakura flower laid in pale gold. It was expensive and hard to source and even Ino had to shut up after he presented it. Overhead the sunset paints her hair neon. "I took some time off and I'm going to spend two months down in Wave heading a clinic."
"Clean living." Sasuke says, sardonic. He's happy enough for her.
"Shut up." She smirks a little. "I think I'll take one of the barges down from Uzushio. Won't that be fun?"
Sasuke idly considers warning Karin. He idly orders Sakura dinner instead.
Sakura grins, all that light behind her. "Atta boy."
--
Six Months, Three Weeks After the War
He is not present at the closing statements. Hoshiko falls from a tree and breaks her leg. It's her first injury since she was brought to Konoha and told her pain mattered. According to a tearful Arata she sat shock still and then screamed for her uncle.
Sasuke spends the most important three hours in shinobi history braiding a tearful childs hair. Hoshiko insists that he stay, that he sing, that they all tell her how brave she is. Shunsuke liberates a cake from the retirement party downstairs using Sakura as a decoy to keep the nurses from realising. He takes a cake filled Shunsuke home with him and lets him sleep in a hastily made up cot at the bottom of Sasuke's bed.
Hinata is pissed at him when she shows up with a bottle of whiskey later that night. The whiskey is for her nerves and the empty bottle will be to beat him to death with.
(A year later the footage from court will be released and Sasuke will ache for Hinata's terrified face in front of the whole world that wants to be as it is. He will watch her look to where he should have been and to the otherside where Satoko was not allowed to be and he will feel, for possibly the first time since Giri, complete shame. Hinata will look up, she will look to the stands filled with orphans, and she will stand. She delivers her speech not to the assembled heads of state but to the hollow eyes of children she's desperate to save.)
At a little after two in the morning a chunnin knocks on his window. He knocks Hinata awake to listen.
A unanimous decision has been reached: in two years it will be official that no genin will fight on the front lines. In five years the Hidden Villages will begin to dismantle the offensive portion of their genin corps. In ten years no one under the age of sixteen will be allowed to be a front line shinobi. From midnight tomorrow it is completely illegal to experiment on, barter with, enslave or otherwise abuse any child, accepting cultural differences. Shimura Danzo will be tried in Konoha for treason and in Otogakure for crimes against children.
--
They make the 5th of May Children's Day.
--
Eight Months After the War
Naruto signs him up as a guest lecturer for a new course at the academy -History of War. It's a bad name for a good thing. He also signs himself up for History of Pranking proving that some things are truly immortal. Sakura is unknowingly signed up for a full semester of lectures on battlefield injuries. Because the curriculum will either start later or go longer there is now time to teach all of the students the basics of healing rather than reserving it for the girls. Kakashi, they all assume, wanted in on Sakura's Week of Farewell Dinners. She's due to Uzushio in four days.
"Woah, woah," Sakura snaps her fingers. "We're back at the Academy boys."
"What an excellent observation." Kakashi says brightly. "What keen insight, Sakura."
She doesn't punt him down the hallway but it is, again, that free dinner she's getting driving her not any care for decorum or Kakashi's well being.
She pulls an old style camera out of her bag gingerly. For all her posturing this must be something she actually wants."Which means it's time for a new team photo, don't you think?"
In all honestly it looks the same as the first: Kakashi has his hands on Naruto and Sasuke's heads to stop them from fighting over who exactly is paying for dinner that is not ramen. Sakura's throwing peace signs and arguing for the new place in that upscale Aburame neighbourhood. Kakashi is telling them all to shut up but in a way that suggests he too wants the expensive option. The same photo, really, but this time Sasuke and Naruto are working on being in love, Kakashi is nearing retirement and Sakura is happy because she's who she was always meant to be. And getting free dinner.
The camera doesn't disappear. There's a photo of Sasuke's face when he gets hit by a water balloon. One of Naruto being pantsed by five year olds. Iruka crying from what first appears to be stress but is quickly revealed to be schadenfreude. Kakashi asleep at the desks surrounded by nine year olds descending on him with markers. Endless ones of Naruto and Sakura smiling, just because. They get one of Sasuke's genuine bafflement when Shunsuke's teacher tells him he's a model student as well as one of his vindication when Shunsuke pranks him not ten minutes later.
True, he keeps all his memories behind his eyes where they can't be touched by time, but these ones he pins on to a board near the front door that houses notes to him, to the cats, to the myriad of children living between his house, the Hyuuga's and the Inuzuka. One day it will spread up the walls, up the stairs and further beyond before it will fade out again. The children will grow up and go different ways and Sasuke's house will be somewhere they spent time long ago. That's the fate of family: to leave, to return, to be a vast thing that goes vast distances but calls only one place home. But until then, until this well spring of hope falls fallow, let them live outside the preservation of any sharingan.
--
Eleven Months, Three Weeks After the War
It is Shikamaru's idea.
The Nara have been, mostly accidentally, collecting census data on Konoha for several generations. Their deep roots in the Intelligence community as well as R&D mean that any one of them is walking around with volatile information at any given time. This is just part of being in Konoha. That Shikamaru, mostly despite himself, has become a know in this knowledge, a gravitational pull in the netting of the city-state is probably schadenfreude for his mother's grey hairs.
Despite not wanting to Shikamaru knows that the Uchiha owned every scrap of land they could get their hands on. He knows that the Namikaze family made a de-militarized zone between the Senju and the Uchiha. He knows that there is a small bakery that was part owned by every Uchiha and given, until the end of time, to the kin of Chizuru, sister of Madara.
Shikamaru knows, more than anyone, what a hole the loss of the Uchiha would have been. Their history once lost could never be found again by one not of their blood.
So Shikamaru sits on Sasuke's roof, in the shitty chair that he keeps his gardening shears on when Sasuke comes up for a late night beer. Shikamaru has a beer, one of the fancy ones that Chouji likes, and an irritated look on his not un-handsome face.
"You should think about writing it down." Shikamaru throws back half the drink in one go, as if afraid Sasuke will insist on talking. I asked all Sasuke would insist on is Shikamaru fucking off. "What you know- I heard. Through the grapevine. What Hashirama said. And what you did. We didn't know that. No one ever told us."
Blood Eyes, Sasuke thinks uncharitably. Why tell you what are weaknesses where when you already wanted us gone?
"There's an open co-op thing near Aguni's office. It's to write a 'History of Grievance'. Danzo took a lot of kids and did a lot of damage we didn't notice because we didn't know how to look. It's being entered into the library as historical record -under Tobirama's name, even." Now Shikamaru picks at the label on his bottle. "They're afraid to ask you. What you would be willing to say."
Sasuke looks up at the sky, at the stars that light up overhead. Mostly he wants Shikamaru to leave so he can turn on the radio and work on his beer belly. Mostly he wants to now do the washing up before Arata comes over tomorrow to help him sort out the glut of fiction books that got dumped on him after he started opening the old Uchiha storage units. Mostly Sasuke doesn't care what Konoha knows as long as the kids do. History has its eyes, it's voices, and one of them must be his as the last son of one of history's greatest names. That was once his actions, his failure, and is now his children.
So it's easy, then. "I can't promise you you'll like it." Sasuke says, "but I can try."
--
One Year After the War
Tsunade is eating lunch when Sasuke gets around to answering her summons. The greasy meat filling is falling out of her sandwich and she literally could not give a shit about it. Fair enough. Sasuke took a day and a half to walk the twenty minutes from his temporary office.
She shoves a stack of files at him, swallows obnoxiously and belches. Only then does she speak. "The families that control most of the farmland in Earth have annexed the region that borders with River. A new trade in live cattle has started operating with no regulation since the product comes from outside the Elemental Countries and we don't have multi-national standards. Several revolutionary groups are gaining ground in contested areas between Giri and the establishment. A multinational ring of child sexual abusers has been uncovered, previously this was barely a crime, but with Otogakure setting precedents many are vying to have it considered a criminal offence. A populist leader has risen to office in the Mitsuhaku area, very influential, lots of money -and completely lawless. Someone has stolen a huge collection of art from the Ito family holdings in three nations banking on our lack of communication to cover their tracks." Tsunade delicately wipes her hands clean. "A separate body formed of like minded militias has requested we hand over the nine tails or they will attack and takeover several key provinces until we concede. Do you know what these all have in common?"
"...no."
"I can't solve them." Tsunade frowns. "Nor can any other Kage, or Giri, or anyone else. Each of these problems requires a multinational force with limited ties to an individual country who will have unprecedented jurisdiction over matters previously dealt with in-house. Giri might have been a contender but they've retreated to Otogakure. Until Madara's trial is completed they will take on no new long term deployments. Between you and me, I don't expect them to do more than they have. Otogakure is now a hub for international politics and keeping it clean will take much of their resources and ours. Solving these problems will require a completely new organisation. It will require that people like me hand over money, resources and cooperation in a way we've never even thought of. It will require that each person working on these cases be committed to justice over country."
Tsunade drops the dregs of her lunch into the bin. She laces her fingers together in front of her face. "Do you want a job?"
"I'm not-"
"I put forward an idea at the meeting. One I think you might be better equipped than most to see through. This isn't to police the world and define it by a narrow set of limits governed by pragmatism. Your job, if you choose to accept it, will be to find the fine line of ethics we will all have to live with. It will be years before you're ready to try and enforce them and by then I hope...Well. I hope we'll have more options. You've already proven that you will fight for what you think is right, against all odds and all common sense."
Sasuke's face twists with confusion. "With the new law?"
"With your brother." She states blandly. "I will never approve of what you chose to do. But I understand better than anyone what it's like to realise you are the last of your family and there is no one to blame for that but your family." A shadow passes over her face, and Sasuke feels sorrow that whatever happened to the Senju left such a deep mark on their last descendant. "I understand that however misguided your choices were they were governed by love and a need to right a wrong. What is the Will of Fire if not an opportunity to do better?"
"I don't have any legal training."
"Neither does any Kage, at the start. Luckily there's school for that."
"I'm not a shinobi."
"Don't need that either. Just a good head and a sense of direction."
"You can't think-" That this will work.
"I don't." Tsunade leans forward resting her chin gently on top her fingers. "But hell, kid, if I'm not just a little eager to see you try."
For the third and final time a path is opened up to him. He says the only thing he can-
"Yes."
Tsunade hands him a scroll. "Let's get to work."