Chapter Text
Itachi visits around dinnertime, after the first round of voting, and after Sakura’s returned to the hospital for the night shift. “This is from Kakashi,” he says, tossing a soft parcel in her hands wrapped in tissue paper. There’s a second bundle still tucked beneath his arm. “He claims that everyone needs to remember their mistakes.”
When she tugs the twine, and the paper falls open, she’s holding a pair of pale blue, summer pajamas decorated in small grey whales. “What a jerk,” she says, but smiles. There’s a square piece of paper on top with Happy 16th scribbled across it. “Where is he? How did voting go?”
“Yamato will be leader before the week is up,” her brother answers, leaning against the moulding of her bedroom door. There’s a lot they need to talk about, like what it means for her to leave, but she doesn’t know how to broach the subject. “Everyone knows it. Kakashi is getting permission to walk you halfway to Suna. Before you ask, I believe Naruto is contending with Jiraiya’s words of wisdoms before leaving for the front at the moment.”
“Well, then pity for him,” she says as she packs the pajamas in her bag.
She doesn’t need much; a change of clothes for the journey there, her unexpected birthday gifts, and the anpan buns from the bakery around the corner that she promised Temari are enough. In the front pocket of her pack, she has her psych evaluation and two photographs—one of her family, her parents and Itachi and even Shisui, from not long before the massacre, and another of she and her team from right a few months earlier, taken by Kurenai in a mock-up imitation of the gennin portrait. None of them are officially dressed. Kakashi’s mask is slipping, Sakura’s hair’s done back in a white-and-blue checkered bow, and Naruto’s jacket has a hole in the collar’s stitches. Sasuke’s the downfall of the photo, looking away from the camera and her sleeve slipping off one shoulder, but she’s not what’s important.
As she zips her bag, careful not to catch the pajamas’ fabric, Itachi says, “Are you okay with this? Leaving?”
Sometimes she forgets—almost willingly—that she and her brother only know each other in bits and pieces. “Yeah,” she says, shrugging. “It’s not like I’m on loan or anything. It wouldn’t really be fair if I back out from where the fight’s concentrated now, you know?”
“I suppose,” he says, the carefulness in his tone obvious. The shirt he’s wearing is too big, and hangs loosely off his frame so he looks sick again. “I guess the situation is still odd to me.”
“Don’t worry. It’s like that for everyone.”
He shifts his weight, leaning less heavily against the door frame but not coming any closer. More awkwardly than expected, he says, “This is for you. From me,” and hands her the second bundle.
It’s a jacket, unwrapped. For a moment, she doesn’t understand the significance, other than it’s dark blue, and she likes the color. Then she unfurls it, and finds the Uchiha symbol embroidered on the back.
“How,” she starts, and stops. With a deep breath, she asks, “Why?”
“Because you’re sixteen,” he says, shrugging, looking away towards the door latch. “Regardless of where you are, you’ll always be who you are. And to answer your first question, I do know how to sew—though admittedly, I did cut the symbol from one of my old shirts.”
Regardless of whether she’s in Konoha or Suna, she’ll never be less than a Uchiha, but that doesn’t mean her position is permanent. “About that,” she says, lowering the jacket. She understands the gesture, but despite their relationship as siblings, he doesn’t know her well know to get how unnerving she finds it. “This is going to be really obvious, but you’re clan head if I don’t come back. Well, it’s not like I can continue the name anyway, but that’s not the point. I don’t just mean if I die.”
There’s a long silence before her brother says, “I know that you and the Kazekage are...close, but no one will ever accept me. You know that as well as I do.”
“Congratulations,” she says, unzipping her pack again to stuff the jacket inside. “No one was that happy about me either.” Looking over to him again, she says, “You’re a murderer and I’m apparently suicidal. We’re the worst clan in Konoha, Itachi. But this village belongs to our family as much as any Hokage, and you’re better than I am.”
His mouth grows tight. “That’s not true.”
“It really is,” she says, folding her arms. “Anyway, it’s not like I’m guaranteeing I won’t come back. Probably I will, but things happen. They could need me. I might die.”
“You’re a brilliant kunoichi,” he says firmly, unashamedly ignoring the rest. “There won’t be many Iwa-nin who are as skilled you, so there’s no need to exhaust yourself.”
She doesn’t need anyone else telling her to stay safe. “Well, it’s not like you won’t get to check up on me,” she says, running her fingers through her newly cut hair. “I’m still ANBU.” After a short pause, she sighs and adds, “I guess that doesn’t make you feel any better. Look, I know what people think about me, but I didn’t risk T and I getting you back just to die.”
“No, I suppose not,” Itachi says, and looks away, running his fingers down the door frame. “You made sure you had help in killing Shimura Danzo.”
For a long moment, Sasuke doesn’t answer, uncertain what to say. Eventually, she answers, “Seriously? You’re bringing that—It’s not like it was premeditated. Turns out he had Shisui’s eye and was using it to influence people. Kai pretty much flipped. How did you know?”
“He had Shisui’s— ”
“Yeah,” she says, and smiles humorlessly. “We did the world a favor.”
Though Itachi was misused worse than she ever was, he’s always been the loyal one, and she hadn’t wanted him to learn what they did. Mentioning it like this rather than letting it lie feels like petty revenge for reminding him he still has potential responsibilities to their family. “I didn’t know,” he says, glancing at her then quickly away again. Kaoru told Sasuke repeatedly eye contact is important. “Not about Shisui. Before—he never revealed who took his Sharingan. No one told me that Shimura’s death was orchestrated. Currently I’m the only one of two at base not involved. I suppose the others grew lax. I overheard Naoko explaining to Hitomi.”
His tone’s accusatory. They told Hitomi, but not him. This isn’t a conversation Sasuke wanted to have before leaving. “No one’s told the Godaime,” she says, “but I’ve spent enough time with her that I can guess she’s already figured it out. Did I develop the Sharingan when I was seven?” By now, this conversation’s grown uncomfortable enough that talk of childhood can’t make it worse.
Almost as if expecting it, he says, without pause, “Yes. You also knocked my forehead protector off with kunai.”
That explains the jolt of recognition she felt during her chuunin exams preliminaries several years too late. “So that’s why you tried the Tsukuyomi? Because I would’ve burned it into my memory?”
He doesn’t answer, which is as affirmative as a verbal confirmation.
“Someone theorized I developed it back then,” she says, turning away as she remembers her sunglasses are still in her top drawer. “It’s the only reason I’m asking. I’m not apologizing for what I did. Killing him or superseding his orders or anything like that.”
“I’m not expecting you to.”
Though he isn’t expecting an apology, he’s expecting something. She slips the sunglasses on and pushes them up like one of Sakura’s headbands. “I really didn’t mean to get you back just to leave,” she says as the sun dips towards the horizon, lighting the sky in streaks of golds and pinks. “I mean, I’m not kidding when I said I know what people say about me. A lot of people are going to think I did this on purpose.”
“You don’t need to convince me of anything,” Itachi says with a small, sad smile. Suddenly, he looks much older than twenty-one. “This isn’t how I wanted to say goodbye, Sasuke, but I’m sure we’ll see each other again soon. Konoha will never stay away from you for long in a situation like this.”
I went five years feeling almost nothing because of you, she thinks suddenly, looking at him in his too big shirt with his dark hang hanging over his tired blue eyes. The boy in the alley exasperated her apathy, but the Tsukuyomi began it.
She keeps this to herself, and says instead, “Walk me to Naruto’s?”
Even if her friend’s with Jiraiya, she wants to see him before she leaves. Together, she and Itachi walk through the ever bustling Konoha streets until they reach the seedier side of the village, where Naruto’s building sign is missing a number. Her pack is heavy on her back. It’s dusk now, and the light is pale, and blue, and incredibly sad.
“You’re my little sister,” Itachi says before she pushes through the door, “and I am so sorry. For everything.”
It’s not all right, so she doesn’t say that, but she tells him she loves him, and lets him kiss her head before they go their separate ways.
At nightfall, Naruto walks Sasuke to the village’s main gate. “Admit it,” he says as they turn away from the market square. “You’re only doing this because you think I’m not good enough anymore now that Gaara got Kazekage first.”
“That’s old news,” Sasuke says, pushing up her sleeves. Flowerbeds dot the yards of every house they pass, brightly colored and swaying in the gentle, hot night breeze. “You’re just jealous because I’m a squad leader.”
He releases a breath in a low whistle between his teeth. In the the moonlight, his summertime tan is bleached away, so he appears as pale as she does. “As if,” he says, his exasperation clearly false. “I’m a jounin now, remember? I’ll totally be a squad leader soon.”
“You?” she says, arching a brow. “Never.”
As jounin, he will be a squad leader eventually, and learn in his own time how undesirable that position is. Captains are responsible for their team’s lives. At sixteen with credentials as loose as his—gaps spent training away from the village alone, no prior high ranking missions before the war—he doesn’t have the experience necessary to handle responsibility as anxiety provoking as that. Sasuke still isn’t. Truthfully, she finds, no amount of experience should ever provide a person their age with the qualifications to give others orders.
That thought comes to her consciously, abruptly, as a dark haired Academy student darts past towards the business district, which is towards the hospital, his pack slung over one shoulder and bouncing against his back.
Without a glance at the boy, Naruto says, “I’ve got a five year plan all mapped out to become Hokage. You’ll regret doubting my awesome skills.”
“You don’t actually need to be the strongest shinobi, you know,” Sasuke says, tucking her hair behind her hair. It’s frizzing in the heat, overwhelming her from the way it falls across her eyes. “You get that, right? You already proved yourself a few times over. Make smart decisions instead of trying to be the best all the time. You’ll get my vote.”
If she comes back, they both think, but it goes unsaid.
Instead, Naruto slows his step, looking down at her with those blue, blue eyes that triggered her first fight-induced panic attack. “Where’s this coming from?” he asks, frowning.
“Because I’m going to see Sakura again pretty soon,” she says, stopping entirely in the middle of the dark, deserted street, “but I have no idea if I’m going to see you before the war ends. Look, Kakashi’s always going to be better than you. Sakura’s always going to be stronger. Itachi’s seriously considered one of the best shinobi alive by, like, every village. Gaara didn’t get to be Kazekage because he’s the best. It’s because he’s good and likeable.”
She hadn’t meant for any of her goodbyes to be this serious, but it’s night now, and her teammate is dappled in moonlight. Though the night is best for hiding, it also, in its own way, strips away any sense of secrecy. Within a week, they might both be dead. Besides, she thinks. Konoha’s dark, deserted streets haven’t held audience to a lighthearted scene in years. The truth is the best she can offer in apology for leaving.
“I get that,” he says, looking down and scuffing his beat up sneaker against the dirt. In his threadbare, green tshirt and mismatched black cargo shirts, he looks the perfect part of raggedy orphan. “I kind of have for a while.” Glancing up again, he continues, “That’s why you have to come back after the war. Our parents worked together, right? That means we need to. There’s got to be some unwritten rule somewhere about it our moms made up.”
“You’re right,” she says as a cloud covers the moon, turning the world slate grey. “Anyway, it’s getting late. I should probably stop stalling.”
Goodbyes make people touchy, she finds; when she turns back towards the direction of the gate, Naruto drapes his arm around her shoulders. “My coronation will be known as Ramen Day,” he says with an easy smile. “All different kinds of ramens served for the festival. I’ll make it annual. It’ll be great.”
“No, it’ll be the worst day ever,” she says. “You need substitute stalls for ramen haters like Kakashi and me.”
“Or I could brand you all as traitors to the village.”
They bicker about the ethics of food festivals until they reach Konoha’s main gate, progressing slowly. Eventually, she slips her arm across her lower back so they walk close together, pressed snugly into one another so she steady grows afraid of letting go.
At the halfway mark between Konoha and Suna, Kakashi and Sasuke set up camp, and sleep without a watch until morning. When they wake at sunrise, the sky’s a dusky periwinkle still edged with grey, the color peeking through the trees. Though there’s no sign of clouds, the air is still and weighted with the sharp smell of ozone.
Likely, she’ll avoid the promised rainstorm, or at least the worst of it. Kakashi is, doubtfully, so lucky.
Slowly, they break down camp and rid any trace of themselves, barely speaking. Even the trek here was nearly silent. It’s not until their bedrolls are retired and the low fire doused that she says, “If you or any of the others need me, I’ll get there. Even if I’m doing something else.”
Kakashi pauses, crouching in the dirt with his hand in his pack, sorting the coffee tins. “Has anyone ever told you that you have a problem with authority?” he says, twisting to look at her, elbows resting on his knees. By now, the sun’s risen, but the clouds are gathering, so he needs to squint his good against the reflective overcast light.
“Not to my face,” she says, shrugging. Though she’s only wearing a camisole and shorts, the heat is rising with the sun, turning her skin sticky from the humidity. “But I mean it. The Rinnegan’s pretty good quick fix if you’re ever trouble. You know, when I’m not sending us to the bottom of an ocean.”
“I don’t think Suna would be any happier with you running off than Konoha,” Kakashi says, twisting back to zip the pack. When he stands, lifting it with him, the metal utensils inside jingle. “If you really feel like flaunting orders, go do something else stupid and end this war.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” she says, watching his shoulders slump as he slouches, exhausted already after just a few short months fighting. She understands the feeling.
He smiles, one corner of his mouth quirking up. “Knew I could count on you,” he says, and sighs. “One of my chuunin teammates was your cousin. I’ve told you about him before, back when I told you about Rin. He was terrible—his temperament more like Naruto’s than yours or your brother’s. But he broke rules in the middle of the War because Rin was in trouble. The two of you would’ve liked each other.”
There are too many ghosts in Konoha and in her family, and whether or not she and the dead would appreciate each other’s company is sentimental conjecture. “I wish I’d had the chance to meet him,” she says blandly before adding, “Take care of Naruto and Sakura, okay? Don’t let them martyr themselves or something. Same goes for you.”
“Oh, you don’t need to worry about me,” he says with a dismissive wave. “Martyrdom isn’t really my style. I’ll watch out for the two of them, though. They’re both a little too idealistic, aren’t they?”
“Yeah,” Sasuke says. “How dare they not be cynical.”
“You could do with a little less cynicism,” he says, so she rolls her eyes and leans down, picking up her pack. “Hey, look at me.” When she’s focused on him, he continues, “The same goes for you. If you need me, just send a message. I won’t wait to go through the right channels in getting an official mission this time.”
Though it’s been nearly a year now since the Isobu close to killed her, she and Kakashi never discussed whether or not he received her message. “That’s a dangerous amount of power you’re giving me,” she says. “I can’t promise I won’t abuse it just because I want someone else who can see in the dark.”
Kakashi is the person she thinks of when she needs help, a pattern that’s repeated since she was twelve and first wanted to ask him about what she found on her shrine walls. “That’s all right,” he says “You’ll save me from the monotony of front line fighting.”
“I doubt whatever I’m doing will be any more exciting,” she says, and pauses for a moment before she asks, “So, what? You aren’t going to tell me to come back?”
“Do you want me to?”
“Not really.”
Despite her expectations, he doesn’t provide a reason why he won’t. “I’ll miss your little black storm cloud personality,” he says, slipping his hands in his pockets. “It does become charming after a while. But I’ll be seeing you soon, kid.”
She needs to be in Suna by nightfall, and it’s already past sunrise. Saying goodbye to Kakashi isn’t like farewelling any of the others. “Once winter hits,” she says, “and daylight goes out in the north. I’ll need you, obviously.”
“I never took you for being afraid of the dark,” he says with another tired half-smile.
Bluntly, she says, “I’m terrified.”
Sometimes, if Sasuke wakes in the middle of the night, she can’t breathe until her eyes adjust. She prefers to fight in the dark because she can use the Sharingan to navigate as much as she likes the surprise advantage. Maybe it’s not a fear she consciously acknowledges, but it’s undoubtedly there.
Cautiously, he reaches out, and places a hand on her head like he used to when she was younger. “’Til winter, then,” he says, so she echoes him, and imagines the picture of her team is burning in her pocket.
A year and a half later, Sasuke is six months into seventeen, the war is crawling towards its end with Konoha and its allies as the predicted victors, and she spends her first night on leave in months sitting on the counter top of a bar in a dress too red for the wet season weather outside.
“So were were out in this boondocks town,” she’s saying to Gaara, who stands beside her, leaning to the side with his shoulder to wall, and the inevitable small crowd they’ve gathered just by entering the door, “like fifty miles from anywhere interesting, and this theater troupe came, and—”
“You’re not airing my fucking business, are you?” Kankuro says, materializing at Temari’s side, who sits next to Sasuke on the counter, with three drinks perfectly balanced in his hands. Since alcohol is a sedative, Gaara refuses to drink it, which Sasuke thinks is ridiculous now that she’s around to control any unfortunate mishaps.
As Temari passes Sasuke her sweet cocktail, she says, “You owe us the right to tell this story. Sasuke is doing her duty as a respectable member of the family.”
Kankuro protests vehemently, gesturing precariously with his beer, but Gaara waves his hand, and claims he’s allowed to know about any misadventures, as their brother. Grinning, Sasuke says, “Right. So. We got stuck here for like a week, right? I mean, you should’ve seen this rain. There was no way out—”
“The river that surrounded the town was flooded,” Temari says, for clarification, as Kankuro sighs in defeat. “You all know what kind of town we’re talking about, I’m assuming.”
In the Land of Wind, the towns out near the northern and eastern are so far from government influence that they have little to no infrastructure. As the small crowd calls out in exasperated agreement, Sasuke says, “Anyway, so we went to this play of theirs—something about the Rain Mother and Rain Babies or whatever—and there was this one character. The lonely princess character sought after for her beauty—”
Two girls struggling to fit on one bar stool share a glance and giggle, predicting the end of this story already, as Kankuro groans and buries his head in his hands. Gaara smiles, the upturn of his mouth slight and barely noticeable, but distinct to anyone who knows to look. “And was she?” he asks, raising a brow so the kanji shaped scar on his forehead wrinkles. “Was she a great beauty?”
“Don’t you know, Gaara?” Temari says, bracing herself with her hands and leaning forward to look past Sasuke, who pauses to take a sip. “Anyone is a great beauty if you wrap them in enough pink silk.”
“I’m never buying either of you drinks again,” Kankuro says, as though the bartender ever charges any of them. “You deserve no nice things. Fuckers.”
“And yet you aren’t leaving for the destruction of your dignity,” Sasuke says, placing her drink down beside her. She has her legs crossed at the knees, and her flat shoe hangs loosely from her right foot, threatening to fall.
Temari knocks their elbows together and shakes her head, moving her long, dirty blonde bangs from her face. “My brother’s a fucking idiot,” he says as Kankuro insists once again that he, in fact, must have been hoodwinked, but doesn’t spoil the end of the story. “Shut up, Kankuro. No one cares about your opinion. So, we saw this performance and it was nothing spectacular, but my brother decided it would be a great idea to woo the princess.”
“There was makeup, guys. Shading. ”
“Cheekbone shading aside,” Sasuke says, “Temari and I figured out pretty quick that this was a bad idea, but he insisted, and—”
Before she can finish, a tune floats in from outside, and a moment later, a boy Temari’s age runs in, his clothes drenched through. “Rain stopped,” he says, breathless. Sasuke catches sight of the bar across the street, where someone else stands in that doorway, presumably delivering the same message. “Come on, before it starts again.”
Violent rainstorms in Suna’s winter wet season have short windows where the weather clears before they return full force, so the residents make the best of time they have. Kankuro slams his beer down on the table and swings past his sister, grabbing onto Sasuke and tugging her down. “Let’s go,” he says as she pats down her skirts. “You fucking owe me for—”
Laughing, she says, “Not with that attitude,” before twirling to accept Temari’s outstretched hand and following her friend outside into the growing crowd.
The party’s gathering energy rapidly, swelling in puddle littered streets beneath an ink black sky blanketed in crisp, clear, silver stars. Mud ruins their shoes and splashes up their legs, dirtying the ends of their dresses as a Saturday night circle forms around the overflowing fountain. Sasuke’s hair falls from its holder when she spins, and is already long lost by the time a girl she recognizes from the grocery store catches her and steals her away from her friend. With the promise of a second onslaught of rain heavy in the cool January air, the understanding that this moment is finite is overbearingly present.
“I think it’s going to rain again,” says a clear stranger when Sasuke steps outside the fray to join Gaara where he kindly retrieved their drinks from the bar. The man frowns at the sky, his face half-hidden by his wavy brown hair turned to curls from the weather.
Sasuke drains the cocktail, watered down from the melted ice, and shares a short look with Gaara before they both say, “We know.”
As she sets down her glass, he takes her by the hand to draw her back, and the man tears his gaze from the sky. “Whoa, what?” he says, so they stop just outside the moving ring of people, glancing over their shoulders. “Aren’t you Uchiha Sasuke and—”
“I’m sorry, who?” Gaara says as Sasuke laughs, ruining the effect, and leads him into the circle for a dance.
Today is a Saturday in mid-January, there’s a war fought fifty miles from the village limits drawing towards its end, and she’s half a year away from eighteen. “No one else is moving,” she says when the storm returns, and the band slows its music, so Gaara logically suggests they return inside. Rain soaks through her thin red dress, darkening it to an auburn brown, and sticks her hair against her neck and face. “Let’s stay here until it gets bad.”
A girl dances with a boy in the desert rain on a Saturday night in mid-January, her shoes in her hand in a belated attempt to save them from ruin. Music plays low beneath the storm like a subconscious thought, and she doesn’t think of the stranger or his wide-eyed recognition again.