Chapter 561: Sasuke's Heart
"...Are all these people Uchiha?"
Inside the Ember organization's underground base, young Sasuke stood in a borrowed disguise, his gaze moving continuously across the people passing through the corridor. The collision of emotions on his face -- excitement, disorientation, something that wasn't quite either -- was impossible to miss.
The people around him were dressed in all different ways. Some moved quickly through the halls in ANBU masks. Others strolled in ordinary clothes, unhurried. Small clusters of three or four stood together, speaking in low voices about something.
But regardless of what any of them were wearing or doing, every single one of them carried that faint, unmistakable quality -- a Yin Release chakra signature he had known his whole life. The unique wavelength that belonged to the Uchiha clan. The feeling of being among his own kind, which he had grown up surrounded by in the clan district and thought he would never feel again.
"That's... Uncle Teyaki... has he really gotten that... old..."
Young Sasuke's gaze stopped on two figures moving slowly in the distance.
An elderly couple. The man's hair had gone largely gray, his back slightly curved with age, his pace unhurried. The woman walked with her arm through his, a quiet, settled smile on her face. They moved together without any particular destination.
He knew those faces instantly.
Uchiha Teyaki -- the shop owner who used to make rice crackers for him when he was small. And his wife, Uchiha Uruchi.
On that night, these two had died. Killed by Itachi.
But here, in this world, they were walking down a corridor.
They had clearly retired. The rice cracker stall was long gone. Their hair had gone white. But they were here. Alive. Moving arm in arm at their own pace, looking like people whose lives had settled into something comfortable and undisturbed.
Their faces hadn't stopped aging at some frozen middle-aged moment. They had simply grown old the way people grow old -- naturally, with time, becoming two ordinary white-haired people living out their days.
Young Sasuke wanted to go to them. Even just a greeting. Even just calling out "Uncle Teyaki" and seeing if they would look up.
He wanted to tell them that in his world he had eaten their rice crackers many times. That they were good. That he had never forgotten the taste.
He wanted to tell them that in his world they had died early, and suddenly, and without understanding why. He wanted to tell them he had missed them.
But a thought came and burned through him.
In his world, these two had died because Itachi was trying to protect him.
Itachi had killed everyone. Everyone who lived in the clan district -- the ones he knew and the ones he didn't, the ones who had been kind to him and the ones he had barely crossed paths with. All of them. And the reason given was "for Sasuke." "To protect his brother."
The thought hit him like something hot and he locked in place completely.
All he could do was stand still and watch the old couple's backs shrink and disappear at the far end of the corridor.
"Come on. I'll take you to see Itachi. You should prepare yourself."
Adult Naruto's voice reached him from nearby and pulled him back.
Young Sasuke turned. Adult Naruto had changed his appearance entirely -- ANBU uniform, mask in place, looking indistinguishable from the people moving through the base around them.
Was this a disguise specifically for now? Or was this what he normally looked like when he came here?
Young Sasuke pressed down the churning inside him and asked in as level a voice as he could manage:
"Who... did all this? Was someone able to stop Itachi that night? In this world?"
"...Let me give you the answer you actually need first."
Adult Naruto's voice came through the mask with a slight muffled quality. "Walk with me. No one here knows my real identity, so don't do anything that draws attention."
He turned without further explanation and moved off down the corridor in the other direction.
Young Sasuke had nothing to do but nod, push down the rest of it for now, and follow.
But his mind kept turning.
In this world, his parents hadn't died either, that night. Not just his parents -- so many people. Uncle Teyaki, Aunt Uruchi, the people who had lived in the clan district, all the faces he had assumed he would never see again. They were here. Living.
They were spending their days in the way ordinary people spent their days. Walking. Talking. Aging slowly. Doing every ordinary thing that people who were still alive did.
The feeling that reached young Sasuke was something he hadn't been prepared for. It stung behind his eyes. It rose in his chest as something he couldn't name and couldn't hold back -- a feeling like walking for a very long time and finally seeing a place to rest, only to realize you had no right to stop there.
He envied this world's version of himself.
The period after the massacre was the part of his life he least wanted to think about.
Everyone who had existed in his life -- the people he knew, the people close to him, the people he cared about, the people who cared about him -- all of them, in one night, were simply gone.
In one night. One single night. Everyone disappeared.
The houses on the main road of the clan district were still standing. But every door was shut. Every window was dark. Every light would never be turned on again.
Nothing remained. No last words. No goodbye. Not even a single person he could have held onto and cried against for a few minutes.
And just like that, there was no one left around him.
A silence like death.
At that time, the young Sasuke he had been could only sit in an empty house and let the tears fall one by one.
Until they stopped. Until he couldn't anymore. Until his eyes had dried to the point where they held nothing left to give.
He sat there. Until it was dark. Until it was light. Until he had stopped knowing what he was even thinking.
That state lasted a very long time. Long enough that his face eventually lost the ability to make the genuinely happy expressions it used to make without thinking.
Now, following adult Naruto down the corridors of Ember's underground base, young Sasuke's feet felt weighted. Like they weren't quite connecting to the ground properly.
His mind kept rehearsing. What would he say when he saw Itachi. How he would say it. Where he would even begin.
There was so much he wanted to say. So much that he couldn't find the starting point.
Why?! Why was he the only one left?!
Why only him. Why had he been the one to survive?!
He didn't know if he was supposed to ask that. But he genuinely didn't understand.
Was Itachi's only condition that he live? Why use that many lives to purchase one? Why not keep their mother --
Their mother was innocent, wasn't she? She had never gone to the clan meetings. She had long since given up being a shinobi, pouring every minute of her time, every piece of her attention, every part of her love, entirely into the family.
She was just an ordinary mother. A woman who loved her husband and her son. Why wouldn't Itachi spare her? Why did she have to be killed too?
Was it... just to force the Sharingan open?
If loved ones had to die for him to obtain these eyes -- then what were these eyes worth?
The Sharingan. Coveted by countless people in the shinobi world. Desired by countless people. Held up by countless people as the symbol of power. For the first time in his life, young Sasuke felt something like resistance toward it.
He didn't want this. A power bought with the lives of his family. A thing he only received because he had been made completely alone.
If he could trade these eyes back for his mother, he would rather they had never opened at all.
"...Hm? Is that... Lord Menma?"
A voice cut through his thoughts from nearby.
It was familiar. He had heard it somewhere recently. But the tone was carrying an ease he wasn't used to hearing in it.
"What are you doing down here? Why the disguise?"
Young Sasuke raised his head and looked toward the voice.
He recognized the person who had stopped to greet adult Naruto.
He had seen that face before. Those blue gill-mark patterns covering the skin. Those eyes that didn't look quite like a normal person's. That tall figure with the large bandage-wrapped blade across its back. This was Itachi's companion.
He remembered the way that person's presence used to feel when he stood somewhere -- like an aura that kept people from getting close.
But that wasn't what he was seeing now.
Kisame Hoshigaki's voice carried a lightness it hadn't had before. No tight defensive edge. No sense of someone ready to act at a moment's notice. The dangerous quality that used to radiate from him was simply absent. His shoulders were relaxed. His stance was loose. And his expression -- even though that face was still exactly as imposing as it had ever been -- somehow read as almost kind.
Not the performed kind. The kind that came from somewhere deeper, the kind that settled into a person naturally after they had been living well for long enough.