Chapter Text
"So you've been doing D-ranks for six months now," Inori begins at the start of the session. "At the rate you're completing them, you'll be finished in under two months. How is it going?"
Sasuke shrugs. "They're D-ranks."
She smiles wryly. "Lots of chasing Shijimi-sama's cat, huh?"
"If the stupid woman didn't keep letting it out, it wouldn't keep running away."
Inori laughs. "Sometimes we can't see how we're our own worst enemies." She agrees. "Or how we inconvenience others in our negligence."
Sasuke rolls his eyes. "At least it's not cleaning trash out of the river." He hates getting that one. Unfortunately, it seems like it's assigned to him every other week—the one no one else wants. He and Sakura get stuck with the worst jobs.
He wants to complain, but he holds his tongue. He knows everyone will simply tell him it's his own fault.
"And what about your peers?" She asks. "How are things going with them?"
Sasuke shrugs. "Same as always."
Kakashi makes him train with the other teams regularly now, with or without Sakura. Some of them are gearing up for the chūnin exams in a few weeks, and Sasuke is being used to prepare them, since he's easily the most skilled of the genin except maybe Neji at this point. They seem to be standing at an even fifty-fifty win rate.
It means he's kept busy, even if he's not allowed to take the exams yet. And, as Kakashi points out, even training against inferior opponents exposes him to different fighting styles and helps him gain more flexibility as a shinobi. That will only help him achieve his vengeance.
Inori purses her lips when he expresses that thought. "Vengeance…? Is that still what you want?"
Sasuke stares at her like she's crazy. What does she expect? That forcing him to spend time with the living will make him forget the dead? He asks her as much.
"Well, no." She tilts her head, thinking. "It's only natural to want to see Itachi punished for what he did—but there's a difference between justice and vengeance."
Sasuke simply continues to stare at her. She taps her pen against her lip for a moment before speaking. "The desire for justice is when you want to see someone punished because they did something wrong. It's rooted in a desire for something to be made right. But vengeance is more about inflicting injury in retribution. It's essentially based on making someone hurt because they hurt you."
"So?"
"So," she says slowly, "consider why you want to punish Itachi. Is it because he did something wrong, or is it because you want to hurt him for causing you so much pain?"
Sasuke opens his mouth, but falters.
"I know Kakashi-san has tried to speak with you about this before." She continues when it becomes obvious that he's not going to speak. "But between you and I, I don't think he's the best equipped to lecture anyone about this sort of thing." Sasuke snorts. "But he was right about one thing: Vengeance doesn't bring anyone happiness."
Sasuke's expression darkens. "You don't—"
"Understand?" She raises her eyebrows. "It's true that I've never been through exactly what you have, but most shinobi have suffered the loss of loved ones. Sometimes, it feels like the grief is choking you. You get angry. Someone took them away from you, and you want that person to pay for what they did." Her voice becomes sad. "But watching that person suffer doesn't help in the long run. The only way to truly move forward is to work through your feelings, to come to understand and accept them. That's not to say that seeing them punished doesn't help—but it's not the solution that will fix everything. Nothing can bring back the dead." She looks him dead in the eye. He can't find it in him to refute her words. Kakashi and Sakura have both said as much to him before. "Think back to last year: When you made the decision to chase vengeance, you gave up everything good in your life."
Sasuke leaps to his feet, eyes narrowing. "You—"
"Please sit down." She doesn't look intimidated in the slightest, blinking up at him with calm, pale blue eyes. "Think about what I'm saying. Are you telling me that things haven't been better since you came home? I know you and Sakura-chan have become close." Sasuke freezes. "You're spending more time with others your age, and judging from what you've said, I believe there are times that you enjoy their company. It's not a clan, but you're a part of something larger than yourself again. Are you willing to give all that up, just to make Itachi hurt?"
He says nothing, looking down at his feet.
"Can you think of a time when you've hurt someone in retaliation for something? Even something small?"
The Forest of Death. He remembers waking up and seeing Sakura's face all bloody and bruised, and how it'd felt to break the arms of the fucker who'd hurt her. In the moment, it had felt like a rush.
But he also remembers the horror he'd felt afterward, when he'd been thinking clearly again.
Inori nods along when he describes the event to her. "That was vengeance." She agrees. "He hurt someone important to you, so you hurt him back. It's a cycle that never ends; we hurt the ones who hurt us, and their loved ones hurt us in turn. It creates a cycle of resentment and injury that we can't break free from. Of course, you were under the influence of the cursed seal," she allows, "but that's essentially what vengeance is. You say it didn't feel good?"
"No." Sasuke shakes his head. "It felt… wrong."
"Was there anything that made you feel better, afterwards?"
There was. He'd been terrified of himself, and the only thing that had soothed his frayed nerves had been making sure his team were all okay.
Inori smiles again. "And there you've hit on the important part." She says. "What you need to ask yourself is this: Do you want to be the person who breaks the arms of the man who hurt your friend? Or do you want to be the person who looks after his friend after they've been hurt to make sure they're alright?"
He kicks a rock down the street as he leaves Inori's office, head aching and throat hurting from talking. He should really run across the rooftops if he wants to make it to training on time.
Except Kakashi is never on time. It won't matter if he's ten minutes late.
He rotates the words vengeance and justice in his head as he kicks the rock. It skitters down the street and rolls off to the side.
It's only his shinobi awareness that alerts him to the fruit being hurled at his head; he raises his hand to catch the tomato, glaring at the man who threw it at him.
This sort of thing is rarer now, but there's still people who hate him. Apparently, in the eyes of some, Sasuke is just as bad as his brother is. Never mind that he hasn't killed anyone. That the Hokage appears to trust him, or that he's serving his punishment without complaint.
It will pass with time, everyone tells him—and it's true, to a degree, that people have generally stopped being as outwardly hostile to him as the months have gone on. But there's always someone who isn't willing to just let him fucking be.
He considers throwing the tomato back at the man as he cowers, pinned under the force of Sasuke's glare—but that would be a waste of a perfectly good tomato. Besides, people are staring at them.
Instead, without breaking eye contact, Sasuke brings it to his lips and takes a bite.
It's a good tomato, he thinks absently as he chews, enjoying a little vindictive pleasure as the man's eyes widen and he sputters in confusion. He turns away and begins walking down the path, only to stop when he hears familiar laughter ringing down the street.
Ino is a few feet away, a bouquet of flowers in her hand. She jogs up to him, grinning. "Okay, that was pretty funny." Her eyes search his face. "You okay, Sasuke-kun?"
"Fine." He grumbles, taking another bite of his 'gift'. "What are you doing here?" She seems to have gotten over her anger at him for leaving, but he can never be sure with Ino. She treats him the same as Shikamaru and Chōji—meaning, he never knows when she's going to find some kind of fault with him. She's shouted at him for a bunch of things over the last few months.
"My aunt works here." She points down the street, in the direction Sasuke has just come from. "It's her birthday, so I brought her flowers."
Sasuke has a mild shock of discomfort as he swallows. His mouthful feels like lead as it hits his stomach. He's only ever seen one Yamanaka in this street. "…Inori?"
Ino smiles. "Yeah! She's your doctor, right? I remember seeing your name on her calendar."
"…yeah."
She seems to realise that she's made him uncomfortable when he tosses the tomato into a nearby trashcan. "Hey, don't worry about it. Inori-oba-san is the best. She doesn't talk about her patients, ever. And I won't tell anyone. Sakura would kill me."
Outside of Hokage Tower, only Sakura and Kakashi know that he's seeing a therapist; there's a certain stigma, especially amongst shinobi, about being in therapy. And as much as Sasuke hates being looked down on by the village for his defection, he doesn't want them whispering about him being crazy behind his back.
Inori has told him time and again that he's not crazy—that his need to see her isn't due to some failing on his part. He just needs a little help sorting through some very complicated thoughts and emotions that even adults can have trouble managing.
Sometimes he believes her.
"Aren't you, like, late for training or something?" Ino snaps him out of his thoughts. "Sakura said you guys were working with Team Gai today."
"Ah, shit." Sasuke had forgotten. Kakashi arrives even later on days when Gai is around, but Lee will be insufferable if Sasuke doesn't get there on time. "I gotta go."
"See you later." Ino brushes past him as he prepares to launch onto the roof. "Tell Sakura I said 'hi'."
Sasuke will do no such thing.
He doesn't have time to consider Inori's words again until after everyone else has left the training grounds. He lays in the grass as the sky goes from blue to orange to pink before finally starting to darken.
He should go home. It's getting cold. The middle of winter is not the best time to sleep under the stars.
He just lays there and stares at the sky.
He hates Itachi. Hates him. He hates him as much as he'd once loved him. He wants Itachi to hurt as much as he does.
But he never wants to feel like he did in the Forest of Death again. That feeling of icy, sickening terror of what he'd just done haunts him every time he feels the curse mark throb on his neck.
Orochimaru had tried to get him to revel in the rush of power. And he had, at first. When he'd fought Naruto in the Valley of the End, it had felt incredible. But when the time came to deal the killing blow, he'd hesitated.
In the moment, he hadn't wanted to do it purely because his brother had told him to. But as he's sorted through his thoughts in the past few months, he knows now that he would have regretted killing Naruto forever.
Itachi's death isn't worth his friends' lives. Because even if Itachi dies, what will be left for him if they're all gone?
He rolls onto his side, staring out over the grass.
But Itachi has to be punished. Sasuke doesn't think he will ever find peace if he isn't. He'll always be looking over his shoulder, waiting for the monster to appear again.
"Yo!"
He rolls back onto his back at the greeting. Kakashi is standing over him, peering down with his uncovered eye. "You planning on sleeping out here tonight? Or are you just really early for tomorrow's session?"
Sasuke ignores the question and pushes himself to his feet. "Why are you back?"
"Ah." Kakashi jerks his head to the memorial off to the side. Sasuke stares at it. "I come here to think."
"Oh."
He trails behind Kakashi as he moves to stand before the monument. They're silent for a few minutes. There are a few Uchiha names in the list of dead heroes, but no one that Sasuke knew personally. They'd all died long before he was born.
"Did I ever tell you who I got my sharingan from?" Kakashi asks, apropos of nothing.
Sasuke blinks at him. "No."
Kakashi reaches forward and taps a name, completely without hesitation. Sasuke realises that it's because he's memorised the placement. "His name was Obito."
"I've never heard of him."
"You wouldn't have. He died in the Third War." Kakashi agrees. "He awakened his sharingan much like you did, saving a teammate's life."
It isn't often that people talk about the Uchiha in Sasuke's hearing; to the rest of the village, it's like they never existed. To hear someone talking about one of them now makes Sasuke intensely curious. "What happened?"
"We were in the Academy together, but I graduated before him." Kakashi's voice is heavy. "I was in ANBU for a few years before he and our friend graduated, and I was taken out and put on the same team as them."
He looks up at the sky, to see the clouds beginning to roll in. It will probably rain tomorrow. "When the war broke out, we were sent on a mission to destroy a bridge. Our captain left me in charge, as the only other jōnin on the squad, while he went off on his own. Rin, our teammate, was captured."
Sasuke has heard war stories before; his father used to tell them at the table—mostly for Itachi's benefit, but Sasuke had been old enough to understand. Most of the stories Sasuke has heard have been about rousing successes, with little more than a faint acknowledgement of failure.
"My father once prioritised the lives of his squad over the mission, and a lot of people died as a result. He became despised by the village, and when I was five, he took his own life rather than live with the shame. Because of that, I was… reluctant to do the same. I wanted to continue the mission without her. Obito refused, and we separated."
"But—" Sasuke is confused. Kakashi is always the one who talks about valuing the lives of one's teammates.
"I was scared to break the rules, you see." Kakashi admits. "But Obito was the one who said the words to me first: Those who abandon their comrades are worse than trash. After a few minutes I realised that what I was doing was wrong. I went back for my team. My left eye was injured in the fight when I found him, and Obito protected me from an attack while I was incapacitated. That was when it manifested."
"How did you get it?" Sasuke's eyes linger on the eye covered by the hitai-ate. He's always wondered that.
"We found Rin and managed to free her, but we were attacked by the enemy. One of them triggered a cave-in. Obito threw me out of the way of a falling boulder, but didn't get out in time himself. He was crushed to death. Before he died, he told Rin to take his left eye and use it to replace the one I lost. It was his gift to me for making jōnin."
Sasuke stares at the name etched in stone. Uchiha Obito. "Did you save the girl?"
"We did. But she died not too long after, on a different mission." Kakashi reaches out again and taps a different name, in another part of the list. Nohara Rin. "She was turned into a living weapon by the enemy, but threw herself into the line of fire rather than be used against Konoha. A hero's death, in the eyes of the village."
"It sounds like a waste." Sasuke mutters.
"War is always a waste." Kakashi agrees. "My captain died in the kyūbi attack, and I went back into ANBU. I was there until the Sandaime took me out and tried to give me a genin team."
"The kyūbi attack?" Sasuke looks up at Kakashi. "Then why were you given Naruto as a student?" That seems cruel, even to Sasuke.
"Because of who his father was." Kakashi smiles down at him. "I'm told you know the truth about that. My captain was Namikaze Minato, the Yondaime. Naruto was given to me for a few reasons, but that was the one that mattered to me. In ANBU, squads are always rotating with promotions and deaths, so you never get too attached to anyone. You guys are the team I've had the longest in my whole career."
Sasuke looks back down at the monument, eyes unseeing. "Did… when you were in ANBU, did you…?"
"Did I ever work with Itachi?" Kakashi guesses. Sasuke nods. "Yes. He was placed on my squad when he first joined. When I tell you that I was shocked when I heard what happened…" He sighs and shakes his head. "No one he'd worked with saw it coming."
"Neither did I." Sasuke muttered, fists clenching.
Kakashi pats him on the shoulder. "You were only a kid, Sasuke. No one could blame you."
Sasuke falls silent, and wonders if he'll ever stop blaming himself.
"It gets easier, after a while." Kakashi says quietly.
"What does?"
"Surviving."
Sasuke doubts that. It's been seven years, and it's still no easier than it was on the night it happened.