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Chapter Text

The first thing he acknowledged after feeling his eye-lids fluttering open was pain. It was a sharp, hot and head splitting pain which throbbed in his temple. As a result of the blood pounded loudly in his ears, it took him a moment to refocus his senses – the ones that weren’t engulfed in agony.

The second thing he registered was darkness. Black, despite how his eyes were stretched signifying they were wide and theoretically seeing rather than blind.

The thought made him silently panic. He was an Uchiha… the last Uchiha. For him to go blind after just awakening his sharingan, after just having taken a step closer to his goal of his killing Itachi, should be considered impermissible.

A sudden set of footsteps quickly alerted him to his surroundings and after feeling himself blinking several times the boy realised he could make out slight shines of light through what he presumed to be, because of the rough fabric he could tell was on his face, a blindfold.

A small feeling of relief passed over him for a brief moment before it was replaced almost instantly by apprehension. If he was blindfolded it meant he was kidnapped, and by someone who knew about his abilities.

But then again, the Uchiha crest on his back was a major give-away to the fact that his eyes were far from something that was to be taken carelessly.

Unfortunately, Sasuke was given no more time to assess the situation at hand as a rough voice suddenly rang around whatever room he was situated in, causing him to mentally jump.

“Ah, he’s awake.”

The voice was unlike any he had heard before and he frowned at the inability to detect any foreign accents that he might’ve recognised from a neighbouring village. His wording also meant he had been in these people’s custody for a fair amount of time.

“Then hurry,” another person spoke from directly behind him and Sasuke couldn’t help the alarm bells ringing inside of him, shocked at how he hadn’t sensed the man’s presence beforehand especially with how close he now realised they were.

The first one hummed and he heard the same set of footsteps walking closer to him and sudden goosebumps rose on his skin, the cool air of wherever they were not helping at all.

Cold fingers groped at his chin and he felt his face being tilted up. His mind cringed at the way could practically feel the other’s gaze scrutinising him sharply despite how his eyes were covered. The harsh grip didn’t agree with his headache, either, and it throbbed even worse than before. He didn’t seem to be wearing his hitai-ate, either, which could have provided his burning hot head some coolness with its metal where the Konoha symbol was imprinted onto.

“Yeah, he’s definitely part of that clan,” the man said and the hand was removed. The other stood up from his crouching position in front of him and moved behind to talk in low mutters to the one by his back. As he felt their breaths curve their way onto his skin, a feeling of helplessness entered his mind, soon followed by rage.

Sasuke wasn’t arrogant — he couldn’t be after everything that’s happened to him. The injuries he had received from Haku in the Land of Waves less than 2 and a half weeks ago still hadn’t healed properly. He was levels behind his brother and had less than the tiniest possible of chances to kill him with the way he was now and since he had been unable to save his family before and couldn’t single-handedly retrieve the bells from Kakashi meant he was not as strong as the girls from the academy would exaggerate him to be.

So no, Sasuke is not arrogant, but he is self-aware. He knows he’s skillful despite those moments and was above the level genin were expected to be these days–

(But then again, Itachi had become an anbu, a job second to the Hokage and village elders, at the age he was now)

–so it would still presumably take someone close but also vastly lower than Haku and Zabuza to best him enough to the point he was now sitting in an unknown place with a blindfold and one of the worst headaches he had experienced in his decade+ years of life.

A calloused hand suddenly rested on top of his head and he flinched on instinct causing the man who was holding it to chuckle humourlessly as he grabbed his arm to prevent him from jerking again.

“Relax,” He said in a way that made it obvious he was grinning to himself. Sasuke couldn’t help the sneer he had sent in the general direction of him.

“Nasty attitude,” the man who had before been behind him noted. Sasuke caught the way the voice held a certain amount of poshness, or rather self respect, in it. He seemingly kept himself together and had more dignity than the harsh captor who was now pulling up on his hair fiercely and forcing him to his feet.

“Move.”

The genin scowled at that, adamantly standing his ground despite the irritated push the older one was giving him.

“Where are we? Where are you taking me?” He asked, pleased with the way his voice came out demanding rather than shaky and scared. Unfortunately, the person holding him firmly was a tough nut and did not give him an answer he could use.

“Walk and you’ll know, brat. Or perhaps you’d prefer if I dragged you there, say?”

Sasuke actually considered the offer thinking about how his legs might collapse at any second with how mysteriously painful they felt.

He cocked his head to the side. A challenge.

The former’s teeth looked as if they were about to shatter with how set his jaw was as he grinned in an almost insane way, though it was rather obvious it was forced.

Within a second, he had moved. Sasuke hadn’t had the chance to locate where the barely audible footsteps were when he felt a thick arm slither around his waist and hoisted him up on his shoulder as if he was a sack.

Yelping, he tried to elbow the man in the neck and while succeeding he received no response but the grip on his body tightening.

He huffed in annoyance, partly at how ineffective his attempt was. In fact, it was infuriating how his two captors hadn’t even seen him as a big enough threat to restrain him apart from the blindfold. Oh, wait until he shows them.

Quickly bringing his hands together he formed the hand signs.

Boar, horse, tiger…

A flimsy spark of fire flew out from his mouth and Sasuke realised with horror that his chakra was being disrupted; purposefully weakened. Fortunately, flames did have the intended effect of burning the head of the man holding him but not enough to render him unconscious or anything to buy him time and escape after doing the same to his partner.

It did piss him off, however, and Sasuke was suddenly slammed onto the ground – not helping his headache in the slightest – and had strong arms holding his shoulders. He felt a weight on his lap and assumed the other was trying to sit on him and, taking the opportunity, he rammed his knee up into what he hoped would be his crotch.

From the howling that reached his ears like music, he was safe to say he got his target.

“Son of a—” the man said, using one hand to hold Sasuke’s wrist and the other for his flailing knees. “Why the hell did you not tie him up, Shio?”

“He’s not a threat without enough chakra to do anything harmful,” the other – Shio – replied. The boy was not even ashamed at how he felt offended by that.

“Hmm. You’re not the one who he just kicked where it hurts.”

A short and exasperated sigh came from the other side of the room and the posher one approached.

“Get up then, you brute.”

At that, the said brute left from his sitting position on top of Sasuke who was in turn forced into one of his own, but on the ground.

What felt like thin and bony fingers kept his hands in place behind his back, stretching his shoulders in an uncomfortable way. It was not long before he felt sturdy ropes holding them together and the cold skin left contact with his.

“Thanks,” He muttered sarcastically and again he felt his body, tiny compared to the bulk of what he had been introduced to so far, being held up by the still nameless one who didn’t even try to prevent the snort he had let out.

“Come on, we’re already late.” Shio’s voice held no acknowledgement to what had just been said besides a small hint of impatience. The other man huffed and responded with an ‘I know’ before beginning to walk again.

With his hands now restrained Sasuke’s options were limited. While it had been frustrating how little they had previously thought of him, it was also something which favoured him. As a result, he had to resort to kicking his legs hopelessly which had easily been countered by one arm holding them both down.

The rest of his time spent with the pair passed without words being exchanged between them, that being something the boy took advantage of to clear his head.

So far all he knew was that he’s kidnapped by people who know of his jutsu’s and one of their names was ‘Shio’. Whether alias or not he could not tell.

After a few minutes they came to a halt and Sasuke was plonked unceremoniously onto the ground. The two others paid no attention to the way he staggered on his feet apart from gripping his arms, though that was intended as more of a way to prevent him from trying anything rather than a helpful gesture.

Another set of footsteps were audible and a new person was walking over to them before speaking.

“Boss wants it now.” The male’s voice was raspy and hard like the others. Sasuke didn’t know what ‘it’ was, but he had a guess which was likely to be pretty accurate. He scowled with his mouth, the only visible part of his face, when the still nameless man pushed him forwards.

The newcomer up ahead opened a set of doors and as he was forced through it. The spots in his vision grew brighter and he he was suddenly seeing more light through the fabric covering his eyes.

“You can take that off of him, Kurai.”

Again a new voice reached the boy’s ears, this time bouncing off the walls of wherever they were in an echo. He seemed to be the one in charge, with the way the 3rd person had called him ‘boss’. Sasuke felt irritation spiking up at the bastard.

Kurai, the first man and the one who had carried him here’s hand was now gripping onto the knot at the back of his head and untying it. The blindfold was finally removed from his face and the section in which had been tied onto felt sweaty, despite the cool, almost falsey welcoming, air drifting into the room.

After blinking several times, the figure of a blonde man with an unattractive pointed face sitting on a slightly expensive looking chair was met in front of him. From the corner of his eye, he could see Shio — who like he had guessed did look almost as proper as the said boss — and the vague outline of the man who had opened the doors. Kurai was behind him.

“Uchiha Sasuke,” The leader said pleasantly as if he hadn’t just kidnapped a 12 year old Konoha genin who so happened to be the last remaining member of one of the strongest clans in history.

“I apologise for the situation you are currently in.”

The younger scoffed and from behind him a low and warning growl was uttered into his ear. The blonde narrowed his eyes but did not say anything. The coldness in his pupils however told Sasuke he wasn’t planning on letting the sound slide though and when he stood up Sasuke found himself involuntarily tensing his shoulders.

“You being here is something undesirable to all of us, but it is necessary.” His expression darkened even further. “You’re an Uchiha. Your clan is dangerous and a disgrace to the shinobi world. The fact that they’re dead is a relief, a solution driven by fate. What Konoha’s Hokage was thinking when allowing you to walk as a ninja is something that makes no sense to me. Even using you as a prostitute to rebuild your cursed clan is stupid.”

.
.
.

A dark storm was raging in Sasuke’s head. A rage hotter than any katon he could produce thundering in his magically no longer hurting temple. The calm thoughts which were previously focused on analysing the situation were replaced by blunt phrases driven by anger.

How dare they talk about his clan like that? His (late) family.

Sasuke didn’t believe in destiny. It was wild, far-fetched and nothing but a cheap excuse made by the humans of this world which were too narcissistic to admit their mistakes. His parents, his new-born baby cousins and his pregnant aunts were not killed for any stupid fate like the man had said. In reality it was because his brother was a cold-hearted psychopath who decided one night that a cool way to test his power would be by murdering the people who had brought him up and showered him with love and attention. That was what had killed his clan. Not a fucking curse.

“Who the hell do you think you are?” To his surprise his voice was low and cold. In circumstances like this he would expect himself to shout loudly at the person who had the nerve to insult the Uchihas. Kakashi would be proud of him for this, he thought vaguely.

Kurai’s hands held his arms to keep him back from trying anything against their boss, but logically even he knew there was nothing he could. An attempt to punch the man would be futile with his hands being restrained and a kick would be unbalanced along with the fire-ball jutsu which had already proven to not work.

So despite how his irrational side was screaming at him to run up and pummel that man into oblivion, all he did was harshly shrug himself out of the other’s grip with a scowl.

The irritating blonde’s smirk seemed to widen at the question and evidently became more complacent.

“Someone one of your family members deeply aggravated in the past.”

The boy blinked at the statement. ‘Aggravated’? None of the new-born babies or pregnant women of his clan could have done that, nor his mother with the sweet and loving personality she had. His father, though, he didn’t put it past. He had been a strong man and being the clan head meant he had made a lot of enemies for himself. But something deep inside him was saying it wasn’t Fugaku.

“Who—”

“You’re brother.”

Sasuke’s eyes widened as he stared at the ugly face in front of him. His insides were now churning and he felt rage piling up once again.

“What?!”

“You heard me,” the other said, sounding impatient. “You being here is revenge against Uchiha Itachi.”

It was fear, the boy suddenly realised. It wasn’t anger that was eating away at him this time, but instead it was absolute terror.

These people were crazy. Surely they had no idea what the older boy had done? Because if they did, never in their wildest dreams would they have even considered Itachi would get even remotely affected by the fact that his little brother who he had manipulated and orphaned was currently captured by freaks like these.

“No,” he said pointedly, too focused on processing the word’s to register and feel embarrassed about how shaky his voice sounded.

“No?” the leader repeated, one of his eyebrows raised and his mouth set into an amused upwards curve.

“He does not care for me. Whatever you’re going to do won’t work.” His mouth was moving on its own at this point; his subconscious mind taking over the emotional one.

“Mhm,” He replied and the part of Sasuke that was paying attention did not like his tone at all.

“And yet he left you alive.”

“I was hardly worth killing,” He said and the words felt like a slap in the face, one that was strong enough to make you bleed. He couldn’t help clenching his fists, causing a warning poke to his back, likely from Kurai, reminding him of the fact there was nothing he could do to make this man feel pain.

“So you say.”

A small nod was directed to behind him and it seemed his captors didn’t need to be ordered twice.

Kurai dragged him into the middle of the room and the other 2 men closed in around him. He was able to see the one who had so kindly opened the doors for them to enter. His features were androgynous but Sasuke could tell it was a male from his masculine voice and heavy footsteps.

“Reminder that this is nothing personal,” he said as the blonde slowly took his seat back at his chair, watching the scene with sadistic anticipation. “This is just one other thing you can blame that brother of yours on.”

And suddenly a hand was pressed up against his ribcage. Sasuke stuttered out a sharp intake of breath as he realised what was happening. His widened eyes met Kurai’s. They were an achingly familiar shade of blue, and they resembled heavily Na— damn.

The pressure on his chest steadily grew and was quickly becoming painful. The boy couldn’t help hissing as it soon became unbearable and then a sharp crack echoed around the room.

A cry of surprise left Sasuke’s lips and the reality of what had just happened sunk in. A shot of prickling agony sliced into his ribs and it hurt. More than that asshole of a headache he had woken up with. More than the feeling of over 30 needles piercing all over your vitals at the same time.

Kurai stood back up straight and the ugly blonde hummed.

“Good. Haraou, fetch Mei-chan for me, please.”

The androgynous looking male left the room but Sasuke wasn’t paying attention. The next few sentences which were directed at him buzzed through the air but didn’t quite reach his ears, his senses fully and uncomfortably focused on the force of the sting in his Costal arch.

“Apologies but we couldn’t have you struggling against Shio or Kurai, could we?” He had been saying. “You can consider this a taster. Things will get much worse from here onwards.”

Sasuke detested this man.

Chapter Text

Sasuke had previously assumed all his captors were men for a reason based on pure stereotypes. 

He was wrong. 

The moment the woman under the alias of ‘Mei’ was involved things got much harder. 

Her hair was an uncommon shade of pink and because of the vibrant colour she looked distinctly like Sakura. Her eyes were a deep red and based on her appearance she certainly didn’t to be seem the sort of person to be involved in the kidnapping and revenge plan of a rogue ninja’s 12 year old brother. 

Shinobi conduct rule no.21: Looks can be deceiving. 

Mei’s primary job was to keep an eye on Sasuke. She’d stand outside his cell for hours, mostly with her back turned but there were a few occasions where he’d catch her staring at him silently. He wondered vaguely how she didn’t get bored, but good ninjas learnt how to keep their minds fixated on one specific thing and not allow their thoughts to wander. 

There was the fact that they wore no hitai-ate and nor did they bare any other signs of being shinobi, though. Like he had noted before, their speech held no accents in which he could recognise in them. 

Sasuke had no way of telling the time from where he was and if he were to be honest he didn’t know exactly when the term ‘before’ was, only that it felt like forever.

After his ribs had been broken (it was still hard to breathe without wincing heavily) he hadn’t had the promise of “things will get much worse from here onwards” fulfilled yet and the boy didn’t know whether he was grateful or irritated at the fact. 

He wondered whether he could get his ass out of here before whatever horrors the ugly blonde had mentioned took place. 

Sleeping was the only thing he really could do, though he didn’t do much of it. It was hard to properly rest with the constant nagging of his subconscious mind telling him he was under scrutiny and where he was lying on was rock hard. 

So, as a result he was reduced to slowly and carefully massaging the skin of his broken rib. It stung, like hell, and everytime he thought about what the bastards had done anger would pulse through him. 

Their plan was utter rubbish and would work no better than Naruto trying to fulfil the ‘don’t eat ramen for a week’ challenge. Sasuke would stand by that fact until he died. 

Itachi didn’t give two shits about him. He had once thought he did; had spent a joyful 7 years of his life sporting no doubts that his brother was the best in the entire world. Telling the younger and more ignorant version of himself what the boy would end up doing to him was like telling a wolf that a lamb was going to eat it one day. 

For these people to even consider that anything was going to come out of dragging him down the hall — like they had suddenly decided to do now — and throwing him inside the same place he had been in when meeting the ugly blonde, who was sitting in front of him in that same chair, under the watchful eyes of his 4 other captors making his skin crawl, made them utterly delusional. 

“Uchiha-kun,” blondie was saying as Sasuke resisted the urge to raise an eyebrow and scowl at the new way they were addressing him. “I didn’t properly introduce myself during our last rather brief meeting.” 

“You’re some old fucker who hates my clan for whatever reason and has fooled themself into thinking that hurtung me would affect my brother in the slightest way. I think that’s all I need to know,” He replied lazily before cursing himself at the potential reaction these words may cause.

It was satisfying to watch the man’s expression turn darker under his words but he was also stepping on dangerous territory. If one broken rib was almost killing him, he didn’t really want to have to deal with a second one. 

“Charming,” he replied sweetly. “Unfortunately, though, I do not have time for this. You may call me Kiiroh. Mei, here, is my niece.”

He watched as the younger boy warily turned his head to face the woman who merely glanced at him in vague acknowledgement. 

“Why are you—”

“4 years ago Uchiha Itachi murdered her father; my younger brother.” 

Sasuke’s eyes snapped up again to meet his. They were wide and shocked, though he wasn’t really sure why this fact surprised him as much. It was obvious that the other would be killing people outside their family, but Sasuke still found the fact difficult to believe. 

“How do I know what you’re saying is the truth?” He asked, quickly narrowing his eyes.

“You don’t,” Kiiroh responded simply. “And frankly, I don’t care whether you believe me or not. The only thing that I do give a damn about is whether or not you suffer. Making Itachi feel the same thing I did when my younger brother died is a vow I’ve made to myself and one I don’t tend to break but I won’t kill you until at least 3 weeks from now have passed. Kurai, Shio and Harou have also suffered one way or the other at Itachi’s hand. They won’t go easy on you.” 

Sasuke scoffed. He’d cross his arms if he could but they were still bound behind his back by that strange wire rope so instead he took a page out of Naruto’s book and ran his mouth.

“What is it that you people don’t understand?” He snapped. “That man does not care about me.”

“You’ve said.” Now the tone was sounding impatient. Sasuke opened his mouth to retort again but with a lazy hand gesture from the other a hand was suddenly clamped over his mouth and from the corner of his eye he could see that it belonged to Shio. 

“Still, it gives me pleasure to see someone related to that son of a bitch go down in flames.”

Sasuke let out a muffled growl. That’s his mother who the bastard was insulting.

Slowly Kiiroh stood up from his chair. As if on cue, fingers suddenly left his mouth and then reappeared onto his biceps, Shio on one side and Harou on the other. Out of instinct he tried to shake them off but their grips tightened and he was carefully dragged to the middle of the room; the same place in which his ribs had been so very kindly broken. 

“Kurai, today our guest here has been quite rude to me, say twice? Break two more of his ribs, then, please.”

“Wh—” 

Before he could finish the first syllable of the word he was going to utter he was forced to the ground with a sudden weight appearing on his lap. 

This time he knew what was going to happen but that fact didn’t diminish the agony that came with it. 

His breath hitched painfully. The edge of the bone seemed to be digging against the inside of his chest and as Kurai pushed on it the pressure only grew. 

As before, a sharp crack echoed through the room and Sasuke couldn’t keep back the groan. He was right when he said it would hurt incredibly more this time. The man might as well have stuffed a heated knife through his lungs. 

Kurai didn’t waste any time to move on with the next bone and as the Uchiha clenched and unclenched his eyes open and shut he could see the asshole actually grinning down at him. 

Another bone was shattered and what little chakra he had pooled into his eyes on instinct and his newly awakened sharingan was blazing. Nobody paid attention to it and amidst the pain, indignation found itself creeping up inside of him at the fact that they didn’t seem to take it as even a slight threat. 

“I was being generous by ordering only a couple,” Kiiroh said as he eyed the justifiable loathing glare Sasuke was sending his way after he, with great difficulty, pulled himself up into a seated position once Kurai had finished relishing in the pain he was feeling and had stood up slowly. 

“Broken ribs have many potentially lethal after effects.” Ugly blonde then began to ramble into a free medical lesson which Sasuke did not appreciate in the slightest. 

“Healing without doctor help can take up to 6 weeks, which is double the amount of your newly guaranteed life span.” The man’s grey eyes held a glint in them which he really wanted to scoff at. “You’ll spend the last few moments of your life in pain, isn’t it wonderful?” 

“Fuck y—” 

Something hit across his face and his head snapped towards the side. Blood trickled down his newly cut lip and a sharp smacking noise echoed through the room. Kurai, like the quote on quote ‘brute’ he was, had slapped him.  

“Be careful with your choice of words, kid,” Shio said after sending his partner a distasteful glare. 

“His disobedience is arousing, though,” Kurai stated after a few moments of contemplation shamelessly. 

“Disgusting.” Mei spoke for the first time, looking at the blue eyed male with her features etched with dislike. Sasuke was glad of the female presence, having someone that agreed with the absolute repulsion of the words. 

A pale hand was lifted into the air, calling for silence. A shadow of a smirk was presented on Kiiroh’s lips. 

“This group, as you will come to know, is a colourful one. I hope you fit in accordingly. Mei-chan, take him back to his cell. We will resume this tomorrow, that being when our joyful 3 weeks shall start, and the anniversary of my brother’s death.” 

A hand tugged around his bicep and he was dragged — not harshly, he realised mildly gratefully — away. 

—

Sasuke is an Uchiha. Uchiha’s are (were) naturally drawn to fire. Water was something they resented. As a result Sasuke wholeheartedly disliked the element, but he also had another reason as to why he was far from friendly with it — or perhaps two. 

The latter reason was because of the litres of rain that had fallen from the clouds during the aftermath of the clan massacre. 

Rain wasn’t something that was uncommon in the Hidden Leaf village, but it usually consisted of only a light drizzle. Buckets of it had escaped from the clouds that month, though, as if the weather was sharing his grief. 

The liquid was clear yet Sasuke kept seeing red. 

Blood littered the streets of the compound even with the constant procedure of it being washed away. As droplets soaked through his socks and wet his feet he would be instantly reminded of the way he trampled through his relatives blood, running away desperately with tears running down his cheeks (the same way rain pours down his face) begging that man to spare him. 

The former reason consisted of a name: Uchiha Shisui. 

His brilliant, exuberant and talented cousin who had been found in the Naka river 2 weeks prior to the deaths of… well, everyone. 

They had said that the cause had been suicide, though Sasuke found out later that his beloved older brother had committed his first heinous crime by drowning Shisui in order to gain the Mangekyou Sharingan. 

He had seen his corpse when they had first discovered the body while clutching the hand of his mother. 

She had tried her best to shield his eyes from the scene, but his 7 year old childlike curiosity had gotten the best of him and he peeked through her fingers. 

What he had seen was an unfamiliar thing with a human shape and wrinkly grey skin that seemed to be on the verge of falling off. 

Shisui but not Shisui’s eyes had been closed but he had overheard his father speaking with a few members of the village council a few days later about how they had been missing.  

At that point, Sasuke had found himself entranced by the foreign sight, unable to look away. It was only now, when he looked back at the memories, did he find nausea building up inside of him at the smallest recollection. 

He didn’t know whether his captors knew these facts and his harsh hatred of water beyond his bloodline abilities but the introduction of drowning torture in their incredibly fucked up revenge was something that practically tore at his mental state. 

Rough hands yanked at his hair and forced him towards a barrel filled to the brim of water. His mind blanked when he had first seen it and he instinctively began trying to tear his arms out of their grip, but not a single movement helped in the slightest. 

He wondered, in the back of his mind, whether Shisui had a similar reaction as Itachi dragged him to the Naka river and then made his intentions clear. 

His head was brought close to the tub. Sasuke officially hates the Uchiha clan’s ‘everyone must look the same’ genetics as when he stared down at his reflection, his face rippled and morphed into that of Shisui’s. 

Before he could react in time, a hand forced his head down. He choked in the water, swallowing a handful causing a feeling so unpleasant and horrid to live with. The only sound was his own blood pumping loudly in his ears 

His eyes had clenched shut on instinct when he was forced down and the image of Shisui’s corpse burnt into his eyelids. 

Something pulled at his roots and his line of sight returned to the scenes above. Dripping wet, he snarled at Kiiroh who was right opposite of him and merely smirked cynically. 

He was dunked back down again with no amount of kicking affecting the sequence in any way. 

His lungs ached as if they were on fire. With every desperate and hungry breath he took his chest would heave up uncontrollably in ways that did not agree with his broken ribs in the slightest. It caused them to constantly jab at his insides and hurt in ways he hadn’t even known possible. 

His hands were tied behind his back leaving no protection between his chest and the hard barrel. As he struggled or was thrusted in harshly it would hit against the wood of the rim leaving him with a rather nasty experience of shouting out under water, causing him to choke on it and his nose to burn and mouth to sting. 

And his fucking captors knew this. 

Everything that was happening to him was adjusted in a way he would feel nothing but pain. 

It only fueled his hatred.

—

If the whole him waking up blindfolded, then bound, then having his ribs broken and the act of experiencing drowning torture wasn’t degrading enough, he now had a collar strapped around his neck. 

Not a dog collar, that was far even for them. But a shock one. 

This development meant his dry insults and curses were rewarded with pulsing of electricity through him. It caused a never ending itch on his nerves to the point it was painful. 

It didn’t affect his pride, however and he kept offering up cusses and kicking his legs and elbowing the others harshly while relishing in the few victories which led to either Kurai or Harao (Never Shio and Mei) to cry out in pain. 

He frankly didn’t care if his mother taught him manners; these bastards could get some for themselves first.  

He wondered, more than once, what his father would say about this situation. Would he look down at Sasuke in disappointment and shake his head at the fact that he had allowed himself to get captured in such an unceremonious way, or would he be mad at Itachi for getting his little brother into this mess?

(A small and rare smile of pride directed down at him. “That’s my boy.”)

(“When we’re alone, you’re father only ever talks about you. That’s why he’s so awkward when you’re around.)

From his memories of the man, he knew it wouldn’t be both. Either one or the other and not any more. 

Then again with the lack of sleep he’s getting his memory could hardly be counted as accurate. The bed he slept on was hard and uncomforting. There were no blankets, either and the water sessions left him nothing but cold with the air in the cell only making it worse. Mei’s sharp and calculating eyes and his shinobi paranoia did not agree with each other and his skin prickled whenever her gaze was fixated on him — which was many times — and he found that hard to sleep in no matter how heavy his eyes are and how dark the bags looked in his reflection through the water 

Now that the topic of Mei has come up, the woman was, to put it lightly, different. 

She didn’t seem to take any satisfaction from his suffering. Whenever he was in the room with her uncle and the others she didn’t speak at all, just stood there quiet and unmoving. The only time he had heard her speak at all was when she had called out Kurai for his rather disturbing statement. 

It was ironic how the only time the voice of the niece of the man in charge of the constant pain he was in reached his ears was when she was saying something that showed morality.

—

Blood oozed down his finger and Sasuke’s yell of pain echoed throughout the room. The liquid was pooling around the floor beneath him and the sight was sickening, but not as much as the look of the his index-finger’s tip sporting an angry pink hole painted with blood in the place of his fingernail which was held in Kurai’s thick hands with the one in question exploding with fury. 

Kiiroh tutted from the other side exasperatedly, shaking his head as he spoke.

“Calm yourself, Kurai. Damn. We now have a risk of the Uchiha getting an infection.” 

The pain and discomfort of the air beating down unmercifully on his now uncovered finger was horrid, but he had caused trouble for his captors so amidst the twisted agony on his expression, he found it in himself to smirk. 

He didn’t regret carrying on the intense remarks about Kurai’s potential mummy issues and small man-part even after getting electrocuted at least 5 times from that alone. 

His spiky hair is going to be even worse now. 

“That was utterly stupid of you,” Mei said, wrapping a bandage around his nailless finger in a way that was too gentle for somebody who was trying to make him suffer for being the brother of the person who killed their father. 

“Funny, hearing your voice,” He replied, glaring at her and only receiving a black and unimpressed stare. Her deep red eyes were something that you could get lost in and Sasue found it unsettling. 

She got up, brushing her hands on her clothes removing the small amount of his own dried blood which had been on them. 

“Don’t even think about taking those off,” She ordered, nodding at the bandage before turning around to walk out the cell. 

“Wait,” He called, deciding enough was enough. He allowed his mouth to twitch upwards at the sight of her doing what he asked and looking back at him with her eyebrows raised. 

He decided to go to the point. “What is it with you?” 

She didn’t reply and as the silence stretched out he found himself getting increasingly impatient. 

“I know you heard me, and I don’t like repeating myself. Why are you so less… sadistic than the rest of those assholes?”

“Forgive me for not wanting to answer an obvious question,” She said, taking a step towards the door of the cell. 

“ Nothing is obvious with you people,” he growled, watching her pause before turning again to face him again with satisfaction. 

“You’re a supposed prodigy. You figure it out.” 

“ I am not a prodigy. That’s Itachi,” He retorted and as much as the words pained him to say he knew it was true and she did, too. 

“He murdered your father and yet you’re still here healing my finger and preventing me from dying.” 

“Kiiroh-sama wants to kill you himself, and after 3 weeks and only 3 weeks. It's been 4 days so you’re nowhere near that.”

4 days, Sasuke mentally noted. That’s how long he has had to keep up with these weirdo’s bullshit so far. 

“You did it gently. We both know you could’ve done it in a way that would’ve hurt, and yet you didn’t. Why?” 

He had her pinned. The way her eyes narrowed and she opened her mouth only to close it again confirmed that observation. 

Her reply came out hesitated, before sharp once more. 

“I… hold no joy in watching someone who did not harm me suffer,” she said, causing Sasuke to actually blink and re-track.

He had thought of multiple different excuses she could’ve uttered, but this was not one of them especially since it sounded like an actual genuine confession. 

“Huh? Why?” He asked, confused, staring at the woman who in response stared pointedly back.  

“You said it yourself,” She shrugged, glancing towards the door and looking mightily like she wanted to just walk out of it with the next word. “Uchiha Itachi killed my father. But he also murdered yours and a lot more.”

He blinked, and then did so again. After repeating the action 3 times he activated his sharingan to search her face for any signs of lies or deceive-ety. He saw none.

He wouldn’t have used the jutsu on any of the other three, but something told him that he could do so with her. 

It hurts his head using it with nausea following quickly after as he felt another bit of his already low chakra escaping him. 

When (and yes, when, not if) he returns to Konoha he’d need to rest. Not go on any missions and stuff like that. But since he had multiple broken bones and a hand that stung so much he didn’t know if he could make any signs with them he doubted whether or not he wouldn't have done so even with full chakra. 

He knew he would have to be incredibly creative to devise a plan and create an opening to leave the place. It would be too humiliating to rely on Kakashi and the rest of Team 7 or any Hidden Leaf shinobi in general to come and save him and 4 days had already passed so the likelihood now was pretty slim. 

He knew not to trust anyone, who wouldn’t have trust issues if their idol massacred their entire family, but as he thought of Mei’s gentle fingers helping his pain, her logical reasoning and pink hair that looked almost exactly like Sakura’s he decided that maybe, just maybe, he had an ally here. 

He was not going to share his revenge on Itachi; he and only him would kill that man and he was going to do it alone but right now it was arrogant for him to believe he could leave by himself, and as decided before Sasuke was not actually that arrogant. 

So perhaps, if anything incredibly dangerous were to happen to him she would help. She, unlike the others, didn't lack human morality. She cared and agreed what was happening to him was highly unfair. 

But she was gone before he could open his mouth in time to ask her. 

Chapter Text

One would assume after constant contact with it, a person would eventually get used to the cold. 

Sasuke was a lunar person by nature, preferring the soft glow of the moon to the harsh beats of lights from the sun, liking night instead of day. His skin was forever pale no matter how much exposure he had to light unlike Naruto who was orange with tan, his attire not helping at all. 

This doesn’t mean, however, that the cold was something he necessarily enjoyed and being wet even more so. 

The freezing air beat at his skin and even the floor seemed warm compared to his own body with his skin stinging all over and his blood running through his body with a temperature mirroring ice easily.

It warped inside of him, inducing breaths so shallow they might as well have never been uttered along with a disgustingly constant and relentless shiver. At times, he had to use the very little chakra that wasn’t blocked off to create a small katon as a way of preventing his teeth from chattering, an act he resented more than any in life. 

As of right now, Sasuke felt like his lungs would collapse under the strain of the pained coughs and wheezes he let out as he sat doubled up on the floor after a rather brutal ‘revenge session’ where he was thrusted in the water carelessly, not even a split second to breathe between when he was let out and then dunked straight back in. 

The back of his mouth bore a horrible sting to it and no matter how many times he swallowed his own saliva it refused to go away. He wanted to clutch at his throat and squeeze the liquid out but each attempt to move his arms were thwarted as with the way they stayed forcefully pinned to his back, the rope digging into his wrists and slowing his blood flow. 

Mei wasn’t outside his cell and Sasuke couldn’t fathom why, but he was too far gone in his retching to question it, as he was when the door slowly creaked open.

No footsteps echoed through the room and the only thing which told the boy that someone is approaching was the shadow that loomed eerily over him, earning Sasuke the feeling of an even greater chill than before.

“Uchiha,”

His mind barely registered the voice and whether it was one he had heard before he could not bring himself to tell. 

A sudden hand reached harshly at his hair and he let out a small and involuntary yelp as his roots protested, hissing as his back was straightened and he was forced to sit up.  

A pair of legs walked around and entered his field of vision. 

With lidded eyes he tried to look up and glare at whoever sported the audacity to so annoyingly interrupt his date with coughing, but before he could the unknown person’s foot moved, their hard upper sole connecting straight with his stomach. 

His broken ribs moved painfully and jabbed inside of him, the outer layer of his stomach throbbing horribly. As he muttered out a mixture of a curse and a cry, he would have fallen back but the hand on his hair made him undesirable stay still, balancing on the other side, before knuckles collided with his spine making the bone radiate a heat feeling almost uncomfortable amidst the bitter and freezing air attacking and assaulting every other part of his body. 

What he soon realised, however, was that the blows were coordinated so while he shook and and sharply began gasping for air on instinct all the water accumulation within his lungs dribbled past his lips and he found himself actually able to breathe. 

Unwilling gratitude trickled up into his mind, an unnecessary product of his upbringing of emphasised manners and being part of the main branch of an highly prestigious clan, as he took in the sweet air as hungrily as his rather large dignity allowed.

This, however, was not the time for shit like that so swallowing back the irritatingly natural ‘thank you’ resting on the tip of his tongue he merely gritted his teeth and stared up at the man above him through his bangs splayed across his forehead. 

He repressed a flinch as he realised that detail. There was a reason apart from wearing his hitai-ate as to why he never did that particular hairstyle.

Anything related to the massacre always caused a hollow feeling in his chest and that included his hair which had been shaped in a certain way, mirrored right now. 

His eyes bled red, two tomoe in both eyes swirling into a fixed position, at the thought and he focused his brain on the face above him which, as he slowly began to stop seeing stars, he recognised to be Harao’s.

“What do you want?” He hissed, voice coming out raspy and he cringed at how weak it made him sound. 

Out of all his captors, Kurai was the one Sasuke had come to know intimately — and not in a good way. 

The man was usually the one who Kiiroh would order to hurt him and he was easily the more sadistic person of the group. 

Shio, on the other hand, was more composed. He, like Mei, showed no open satisfaction in his suffering, but when ordered to put an end to his very frequent strugglings he didn’t object in the slightest way and followed so without batting an eye.

Shio and Kurai’s arguments became one of the very few sources of entertainment Sasuke had come to find and the way they disagreed on almost everything reminded him in a half-heartedly strong way of him and Naruto, or any two members in Team 7, really. 

Kiiroh was nothing but an asshole who a very very tiny part of his brain sympathised with, but even so a much larger and the vast majority despised him. 

He seemed to enjoy watching him in pain rather than inflict it himself which, in his personal opinion, was more or less (the former, probably) just as bad. 

There was one person, however, that he knew nothing of. 

Harao was like a phantom, barely speaking and doing nothing but subduing him when asked to. It was almost as if he didn’t exist at all and his androgynous features helped with the way he looked as if he was nothing but a doll. 

It was unsettling, if he were to be honest, but also one less bastard he had to put up with. 

Even now, the male’s face was unwavering as he looked down at the boy on the ground, sporting nothing but a very slight curiosity. 

Sasuke tilted his head to the side, eyes glaring for an answer to that small emotion. 

“For being the last member of what was once the strongest clan in the Land of Fire, you are oddly pathetic,” was his idly noted response. 

Anger in the largest quantity yet exploded in him and had his hands not been tied Sasuke would have found it in himself to punch the man’s horribly artificial-like face. 

“If you’re only here to antagonise me then you can fuck off,” He growled, pulling at his bondage without much affect.

 The man hummed, crossing his arms and raising an eyebrow. 

“You’re not really in the position to make demands.”

Sasuke’s patience was thinner than paper and the only thing that stopped him from snapping was the other’s next words. 

“But, that isn’t the reason I’m here. Merely an observation.”

“Then what?” 

Harao considered him for a moment, silver eyes glinting in the darkness of the cell as they narrowed. 

“What is she planning?”

“The fuck are talking about?” He replied angrily. 

Harao ignored him and merely began to walk closer. “What does she see in you?” 

His footsteps echoed in the otherwise silent room, only stopping once the man was right in front of the boy, and crouched down so that they were eye level, the action being carefully assessed by the other’s sharp and wary eyes.

“Sure, she was not on board with the plan, but to think she’d actually try and help something like you,” Harao continued, easily ignoring the rage piling up inside of the younger one.  

“Talk to me like I’m a person, bastard,” Sasuke snarled, the dehumanisation making him want to scream. 

(His mother would do so hoarse in the afterlife he didn’t believe in if she ever found out what sort of ‘foul’ language he was using.)

So much for one less asshole he has to deal with. 

“And why should I?” Harao asked, tilting his head to the side as he stared deep into Sasuke’s still crimson eyes.

“ ‘Why should you’?” He scoffed, repeating every syllable with mock contemplation. 

“Because, in case you haven’t noticed, I’m not an alien from space and actually a human which you should have the decency to respect even if you are all just arrogant psychopaths!”

A widened smirk was not the reaction Sasuke desired after he blurted out his words and his eyes grew more agitated as he stared at it, having to deactivate his sharingan as a consequence of the light headedness that was feeling threatened to take over. 

“You talk as if we’re the insane ones,” Harao said, face inching closer into the 12 year old’s. “When you’re said to be precious village does the exact same same as us.” 

After what genuinely felt like a long time, a short bark of laughter actually left Sasuke’s mouth. 

“I certainly do not recall Lord third breaking a new genin’s ribs for the mere fact of their brother whom they both mutually hate is a rogue ninja,” he said like the smart ass he was. 

“Ever questioned, then, why your oh-so perfect Hokage didn’t send shinobi out after your lovely onii-chan after he killed your overpowered little clan?” Haraou asked, looking at Sasuke so directly that he could see himself reflected in the other’s pupils — so close that their noses were touching and all Sasuke was thinking was how much he’d like to recoil away.

“He’s powerful,” was Sasule’s curt response as he grimaced, not liking where the topic was going in any way.

“Because your clan was nothing,” Harao corrected. 

“The Uchihas were and still are nothing but broken objects for the Leaf to use, thrown away once their use is over. I bet that stupid village of yours is secretly glad your cursed clan is gone, and that includes them waiting impatiently for your own death.” 

“Shut up,” Sasuke replied, teeth gritting as his hands balled into fists behind his back. 

“Just a wake up call.” The man said, the direction of his still moving face changing course and towards the right so that this time his lips were brushing the other’s ear. 

Sasuke thinks that maybe he should rearrange the order of his least favourite people here.

“To the original topic, I may not be able to prove it but I know what Mei is doing behind the scenes. And…” He drawled, “I doubt Kiiroh–sama would be pleased with the potential fact of his own niece working with the Uchiha brat.”

Sasuke jumped as something hot and wet tickled the shell of his ear and his shock was soon followed by disgust as Harao deliberately licked him with snail-speed. 

“Kurai has really wanted to do that,” Harao whispered, the hot breath adding to the repulsive tingling Sasuke felt before the term of personal space was finally accepted as Harao moved back and stood up. 

“I suggest you tell Mei to back off or you might end up getting her killed.”

He then left Sasuke alone in the middle of the cell with an awful itch at his ear and a following urge to rip it out as a way to get rid of the disgusting saliva left on him by that freak. 

From there, things got worse for Sasuke’s unfortunate soul.

—

Kurai straddled him to the ground, weight on his chest and pushing right onto his broken ribs. He had growled and retaliated, but things didn’t work before and didn’t work now. 

Shio was sitting by his head, holding his still tied arms with a bored expression as if he hadn’t just broken them both so that they’d successfully move from behind his back and into his position above. 

Everything was hurting at this point. Every joint and muscle of his body was in pain, stinging, pulsing.   

He was too busy glaring angrily at Shio to notice the way Kurai was drawing closer until something cold, metal and sharp rested against his bare arm. 

Sasuke’s breath hitched, heart skipping a beat as the former grinned haughtily down at him. 

“Looks like a canvas,” He chuckled before pushing the dagger clutched in his hand down, slicing his skin. Sasuke let out a half muffled gasp as he bit his lip immediately as an act to prevent any other noises of discomfort escaping his mouth. 

Kurai’s anticipation grew, sadism not satisfied enough with a stifled wince. He stroked the knife hard through his pale outer layers, forming a letter.

K

From above him, he heard a small ‘tch’ noise. 

A few unwilling tears clouded his glance up at Shio’s face, making the expression, one of irritance, appear blurry and distorted as he looked down at his partner’s handiwork.  

“Mindless,” He hissed to the other’s angered perplexion and annoyance. 

“Who do you think you are–?”

Shio’s dark eyes narrowed. “If you’re going to write something, then do words that will make him truly angry, feel the same rage we do towards his cursed brother making it so large it heats up his skin to the point it consumes him and everything in his life.”

Stupid. Unintelligent. Foolish. Dumb. Witless. That’s all these people are to Sasuke. They act as if he feels anything but unfathomable hatred when it comes to that man. They act as if the loathing emotions he has towards the last of his own kin doesn’t wrap around him like a blanket, never leaving him and acting as his most loyal companion, haunting him night and day. 

They act as if killing Itachi isn’t his only purpose in life, something that is if he doesn’t ever end up doing it, he would be utterly worthless. 

“As if someone with the likes of you can despise my brother as much as I do,” He growled, spitting up at Shio’s face as best he could with the smallest quantity of energy he’s had and the fact that gravity seems more disliking today. 

Shio’s hand shut him up, covering his mouth and preventing him from opening it. 

“You’re nii-san murdered my fiance,” He stated calmly. “A day before our wedding.” 

( “I’d really love to be your sister-in-law one day, Sasuke-kun!”)

(“Izumi-chan is the only one I can say Itachi truly has feelings for, but don’t you dare tell him I told you that.”)

“My family,” Sasuke seethed in a low voice, the hand having moved from his mouth before immediately clamping back on after those words. 

“ He is your family,” was Shio’s response. “He might have killed your clan, betrayed your trust awfully, but deep down you still love him. Because his blood is yours. That’s what disgusts me and Kiiroh-sama.” 

The roar of ‘I don’t love him’ was enrolled on his tongue, his voice box ready and vibrating for a shout, before it slowly left him. 

Sasuke hated Itachi from the bottom of his heart. He woke up, lived, and then went back to sleep everyday with that knowledge firmly inside of him. Steeling him, preventing him from just succumbing to grief and bringing a knife to his own throat. 

But in the deepest pits of his mind, the one Sasuke will never acknowledge nor ever bring up again, was a side channelling his 7 year old self that was still in thorough denial. 

It was stupid — he had seen with his own eyes Itachi killing every aunt, cousin, uncle, grandma, grandad, mother and father he has ever had and then force him to watch it for another half a million times. But even knowing this a part of his brain was resolute on the fact that it wasn’t his brother he had known, loved and trusted for a little less than a decade, or that maybe he had been manipulated in some way; forced into committing all those completely heinous crimes. 

So yes, Sasuke could not completely hate the man, not with the way he was still more or less convinced of his innocence — but these people who held no ties with him could do so easily. Could plot their revenge easily. If they aren’t strong enough to take the Uchiha himself, why not take the only one he had left alive?

And Sasuke hated it because he was viewed as the weaker of the two, despite it being true, just as his father had always known. The one who they could easily subdue and the damsel in distress. 

Except he had no prince coming to save him. He was — is — on his own. But he is also the one who will leave here with an even deeper motivation for ending his brother’s life.  

So he allowed the fingers to rest over his eyes. He allowed the blade to dig into his skin, each stroke forming a sting more severe than the former. He allowed words that will likely never leave him be carved into it because that way when it came to the day his life surmounts to, he’ll be able to fight devoid of any doubt weighing him down. 

A bastard’s otouto 

—

Drowning torture left Sasuke undoubtedly wet and at this point in time the boy wasn’t exactly sure what was moisturing his clothes. 

His nose was pink and numb with the constant exposure to freezing temperatures making it senseless and unable to smell. He had a feeling, though, that water wasn’t the only thing dousing his shorts. 

Amongst the liquids there was one identifiable substance. 

Blood. 

The red was the exact same as what had been painted all over the Uchiha compound one night. The same red he had sprinted, splashed and stumbled through all while begging pathetically for his life. 

The same red he saw inside the gaping holes in his parent’s chests every time he closed his eyes, burned beneath his eyelids. 

The same red that was shaped carefully, forming horrible words on his forearm. 

(A bastard’s otouto) 

His white arm guards had disappeared along with his hitai-ate meaning they were visible for all the phantoms in his cell to see. 

Unlike when his nail had been pulled off, Mei hadn’t come in to bandage anything. It remained uncovered and displayed. Something he had no choice but to look at with the way that after Kurai had finished graffiti-ing his arms Shio had let them droop in front of him rather than behind. 

They were the only hint of colour in the cell of grey and black and his clothes so damp the blue was slowly beginning to fade away. 

Mei’s pink hair was the only other thing that ensured the fact he wasn’t seeing everything in black and white, along with Kurai’s deceivingly bright blue eyes which his mind positively blanked at whenever he looked at them, the image immediately changing into that of the wide smile of the blonde boy with the same sapphire eyes who he almost laid down his life for mere weeks ago. 

Whatever happens, Uzumaki Naruto can never see him in the state he is in now. Drenched, cold and hurt; humiliated by letters written permanently in his own skin. A real perfect rival, he must be. 

(“For being the last member of what was once the strongest clan in the Land of Fire, you are oddly pathetic,”)

Sasuke grited his teeth, shaking his head in an attempt to banish the thoughts away.

Having not eaten in days, it was no surprise that sharp and painful pangs of hunger were creeping quickly into his stomach. 

Sasuke’s body felt positively empty and his wrists seemed to be more bony than usual making the ropes wrapped formerly tightly around them more loose. 

Perhaps, if he stretched enough, he could free them — but energy came first, and there totally wasn’t that other fact his arms were fucking shattered . 

Even sleeping was something that chose to avoid him, dancing around the boy in clear amusement of his dire sufferings. And when he did end up getting that blissful escape from reality they’d be cut short with what used to consist of memories from the massacre to images of Shisui’s bloated corpse, staring up at him from his socketless and missing eye all while waiting patiently for him to join him at last once Kurai lets his head stay in the water for too long. 

Another reason he wanted food so desperately: to get rid of that awful sting at the back of his throat caused by the water flooding his nose and travelling through his airways. 

But perhaps whatever God was up there gave him a rare show of pity as no sooner had the thought passed over him had Mei entered his cell, holding a cup of an unsavoury smelling stew which Sasuke was willing to consume anyway to satisfy his starvation. 

She placed it in front of him before giving the stink-eye and leaving. 

Well… that was rude. 

Either she was as dumb as the other people and he overestimated her morality or she would be returning with a pair of scissors to cut the rope off so he could actually take the cup and gulp the food down (again, not counting the fact his arms weren’t going to be moving anytime soon.) 

But she didn’t, merely just resumed her position in front of the newly locked door. 

“Uh, Mei- sama ,” He started in a falsely sweet voice he thought he might actually choke on. “I can’t really eat if my hands are bound.”

No reply. 

Impatience assumed position in his brain and he bit his lip to stop himself from shouting at the female. 

Patience, Sasuke , a voice that sounded enragingly like Itachi ordered in his head. 

(A bastard’s otouto)

Mei would come around. Hopefully. 

She only did when his stomach embarrassingly growled three times in a row. 

“I’m not allowed to free your hands,” she said, deep red eyes holding the smallest expression of pity in them — with the rest of a much larger surface area of annoyance —  “So…”

She gestured awkwardly, her reply being blinks of the eye and a look of blank questioning.

She sighed deeply. “Open.”

“You’re not feeding me,” He snapped, face crinkling with both disgust and embarrassment at the thought. 

“It’s either that or starve,” she stated with an annoyingly matter of fact tone. 

“ Or you untie me!” He retorted. “My arms had been very kindly broken, it’s not like I can do anything with them anyway!” 

“One, that means you still wouldn’t be able to eat—”

Sasuke hated how logical that was. 

“And two, An Uchiha’s endurance has always been said to be something that should never be underestimated.” 

As glad as he was that they were at least some-what taking him seriously as a consequence of his last name, it was still a double edged sword and so when what they were assuming didn’t even apply to him and was not beneficial in the slightest he wished greatly that perhaps his clan’s strengths weren’t as widely known. 

He weighed his options, the indignity of being fed like a child (the last time that happened being by his late mother) battling with the gnawing hunger rippling throughout his body. 

Anybody else would allow their survival instinct to succeed, but Sasuke’s pride had always been a formidable opponent and as a result his lips remained firmly and stubbornly unparted. 

“Don’t you dare say I didn’t give you a choice,” she ordered and spooning the stew, she shoved the cutlery hard against his closed mouth, the impact forcing through them and settling on his tongue. 

He gagged, but before he could thrash hopelessly out, the taste, however unpleasant, reached his senses and instinct won. With great difficulty from a water-born throat he swallowed. 

“I’ll never get your stubbornness,” she said after he finished chewing. 

“A weakness,” was the boy’s reply and in spite of himself he allowed a small grin. 

The action earned a small huff from the other. 

“Then get rid of it.” 

Gradually, the mass of the stew diminished as he ate more. It was not the ideal method, but Sasuke found himself too pleadingly engrossed in the food to care. For once he’d bite back his pride and Mei was more than happy with this development. 

“Let me see that,” she said after the contents of the food in the cup were finally reduced to nothing. 

“Huh?”

“Your arm,” She stated impatiently before reaching forwards and grabbing it for herself.

She surveyed the words with a frown, glancing at him while wordlessly getting out another roll of bandages from one of her larger pockets of the coat she was wearing. 

She carefully wrapped them around it in silence, only the sound of each other’s heavy breathing meeting the other’s ears, Sasuke’s being more rattle-like and hollow than average with the broken ribs seemingly stabbing into his lungs. 

It created a large sense of Deja Vu but, unlike the before, there was no bombardment of questions and confusing answers. 

Sasuke had spent the last few days (hours, weeks?) with no noise apart from the same breathing to welcome with the occasional shouts and orders coming from his captors and the cracks of joints and bones from within him, but this one wasn’t like the others. 

It was comforting, almost. Mei’s presence not being a hindrance in any way or something he wanted to leave as soon as possible. 

It calmed him; steeled him. Why? He could not tell. 

There was an odd bandage, covering the ‘K’ completely discarded by Kurai and Shio.

It looked, as unbelievable as it sounds, weird.

Both noticing it, Mei and Sasuke ended up laughing — something both of them hadn’t done in quite a while.

Chapter Text

“One week already, huh?” a male voice half-monologues, barely above a whisper but still hard and firm enough to be heard.  

Kiiroh’s grey eyes held no joy in them despite the tugging of his lips as he stared up at the dark sky. 

“Almost there, brother.”  

————— 

Sasuke’s eyes were so thoroughly empty, and Mei hated it.  

They were bottomless pits; a dark abyss which held no ending. Black, and nothing more, with only an occasional flicker of light. It was these features along with genetics that made his resemblance towards Uchiha Itachi seem exact and while it was to be expected, it still resulted in sending shivers down her spine.   

Being related to a monster like that would have to be a heavy burden to carry.  

She couldn’t help wondering what sort of brother the rogue-nin had been like to the boy. Was he as cold and heartless as he was the day when her father had been cut up her father in quick motions, not even taking a second glance back at the 14 year old girl curled up into a ball in the corner of the room, or had he been like her uncle once upon a time; looking down at his little brother with joy and adoration.  

Mei thought about the way the younger boy always appeared so… haunted, the pressure of being the last member of a clan that was slaughtered in front of his eyes over-weighing his too small and bony shoulders.  

She thought about the way he’d fight back his rage whenever his brother was mentioned, visualising the angry fire clouding the reflection of his pupils.  

However, unlike his brother, among that matured resentment there was childlike innocence. Rare times where the black eyes carrying trauma in them would soften at the smallest of acts. Feeding him brought the feelings of denial, rejections and pouts.  

Mei thought about the hundreds of people he had lost, all at the hands of the same person he was suffering again because of. She thought about her blinded by rage uncle and his sadist lackeys.  

Uchiha Sasuke didn’t deserve to be compared with someone of the likes of Uchiha Itachi, let alone beaten and partially isolated just for the mere fact of them being siblings.  

So she helped him, purely because of those facts. 

And one another.  

His characteristics and maturity mixed with the true person he was behind the mask, innocence that was unblemished, happens to be so much like what she could remember of her father who raised her as a single parent when he was at the mere age of 19. 

And Kiiroh probably saw it too, which in his case only made him more violent.  

———— 

Hair, dirt and dust in his face, Sasuke tasted the ground as a thick hand nestled in his spiky locks.  

A new cut was sliced evenly across his cheek, the cold air nipping away at it causing the fine outer wound to hiss in protest.  

Somebody’s fist hit at the back of his head and his temple throbbed as his blood pumped furiously.  

The impact caused his nose to smash against the floor and a humiliating wetness formed in his eyes as the bones readjusted themselves, blood sweeping out of his nostrils.  

His broken arm and ribs jolted horribly as his back was greeted by another fist and Sasuke winced into the ground, his nose joining the ‘bones broken by complete assholes’ collection, which was, at this point, very large. 

At the same time nails began biting into the sides of his neck, drawing blood that sept down his nape and while it was, indeed, unpleasant, it did allow at least some minority of warmth to make contact with his otherwise ice cold and goosebump filled body.  

The wounds pricked uncomfortably as the nails travelled further into skin, enough to leave marks and dents in it.  

His eyesight was tainted with red, the blood he sees every night in his dreams appearing before his eyes and beneath the lids.  

Red is the colour of the one thing his clan prided the most, and yet Sasuke despised it. It was one of the reasons he’d never return Haruno Sakura’s feelings.  

The ignorant girl floundered the colour around wherever she went with that hopelessly long dress of hers, and each time he was forced to acknowledge her all he’d see is his family members painted in crimson. 

Too far gone in his self and Sakura hating thoughts, he barely even noticed whoever was beating him stand up, and then purposefully walk over his back as he left the cell.  

Bruises weighing down his face, Sasuke’s dignity decided that it was finally time to leave him and he slowly began to painfully crawl back towards his poor excuse for a bed which may, at least, provide some comfort to his aching body as it moaned silently in protest with every movement he made.  

The bandage Mei had applied over his blemished arm had torn, the thin dark redness of the words peeking innocently through the holes.  

(A bastard's otouto)  

Everybody had a voice at the back of their head. Whispering stuff into their ears, commenting either cynically or kindly on every detail around in the person's life, degrading them or giving them hope. 

In Sasuke’s case, his was the second of his two mortal enemies.  

“You’re that bastard’s otouto, sure, but you're not suffering because of him. After all, he was right.”  

Just as Uchiha Itachi had said, the 12 year old lives a wretched life.  

A cursed, pathetic and sorrowful life full of nothing but despair and betrayal.  

Sasuke used to believe that he should have died in place of literally anyone of his clan and that they deserved a future instead of him, but now he knows that each breath he inhales in and then out is punishment that they shouldn’t burden themselves with. Because he was too weak. 

Itachi would have never been in this position no matter how strong the enemy he’s facing is. No, the most severe injury he had ever suffered was a sprained ankle. 

It doesn’t matter if he despises every beat in his chest, neck or wrist  because it reminds him of the unavoidable fact that he is alive and not in the friendly and welcoming hands of death.  

It doesn’t matter if the loss of his clan and the fact that he’s still not with them warps into him, curling around all of his insides and showing no sight of letting go.  

It doesn’t matter if he dying by Haku’s hands, senbons, to protect Naruto’s life — deadlast’s life that held infinitely more value than his — is the most fitting way to end the story of the Uchiha clan, only for it to be deprived from him by the universe’s cruel nature.  

He deserves every molecule of liquid threatening to overflow his lungs. He deserves every carving that has made its way into his skin. He deserves every degrading and humiliating sentence that is whispered into his ear by Harao. He deserves every broken bone he receives from Kurai’s harshness which each feel like white hot knives being plunged into his gut.  

(“You look too sad for a boy as young as you to be” the kind man from the tailor shop who had stitched the Uchiwa onto his clothes had once said to him, a few months after the massacre . “I know the loss of your family was a terrible tragedy, but you must move on. They would not have wanted you to feel so sadly about it.”  

Sasuke then and even now wanted to laugh. Laugh himself hoarse. The man acted as if he could move on.) 

He deserves it all, because it's his fault for allowing himself to be caught. For being so weak that the wretched life he had been granted was of no value whatsoever.  

(Because he couldn’t move on then, and he never will.) 

————— 

Mei looked through the bar’s of the cell, taking in the sorrowful sight of the boy, curled up and asleep on the rock labelled as a mattress, his face littered with shadows of either new or already healing bruises. 

It was so achingly pitiful and yet she could not allow herself to look away.  

This is what her uncle had done. She needed to see this, to allow the hate and disrespect she had developed over time towards him take over her conscious mind, so she could do what she had vowed.  

“It’s disgusting, isn’t it?”  

She almost jumped at the sudden voice, her mind too occupied to sense the approach of a familiar chakra signal flailing around the dingy room until it was right beside her.  

“The Uchiha clan; after all its greatness, this is what it has become. And I was hoping the boy would prove to be a satisfying challenge for a change.”  

“Harao-san,” She said stiffly, trying her best to ignore the previous statement. She has never liked the man, his complete disregard for human life always having bothered her. 

“How are things?” He asked pleasantly, mimicking her gaze as he stared unsubtly at the contents within the cell room.  

In his anguished sleep (the nicer phrase for unconscious state) Sasuke very surprisingly stiffened, instincts likely aware of the gazes he was earning. 

“Such as?” Mei questioned, looking at the blank and relatively dirty, grey wall opposite her, careful to mask her expression in a way the faults were something only the Byakugan or Sharingan could spot.  

“Well, potential developments, maybe. Word from Uchiha Itachi is one. Or other stuff more… personal to your own plans,” Harao replied.   

Her dark red eyes met his grey ones impassively.  

“My plans are my uncle’s.”  

“Ah, and yet you argued against the capturing of this boy,” he said while gesturing at the one in question.  

“As I’ve already expressed, I have no interest in harming someone who hasn’t done so to me. Uchiha Itachi, I’d be more than happy to execute. His brother, on the other hand, has done nothing.”  

At that, Harao let out a long drawn out sigh.  

“Innocent, guilty, what’s the difference?” He asked, leaning on the bars, cold eyes watching Mei’s with a sharp and unblinking stare. “It’s all the same to me.” 

He caught sight of her incredulous glare and chuckled.  

“My dearest Mei, I feel nothing knowing if my victim stole a few thousand yen from an old lady or not. The person I’m about to kill is nothing to me except the person I’m about to kill.” 

“So your motivation for pursuing revenge against the Uchiha Itachi is?”  

“My pursuit for him isn’t personal, you know.” 

The smirk on his face was infuriatingly too big and Mei tried her utmost best to stifle her loathing reactions. 

“When he was still a Konoha shinobi he landed me in prison for conducting illegal human experiments, and yet that’s never happened to Orochimaru, the Snake Sannin. This world is coloured in grey. You can commit a crime or not, but it doesn’t matter.” 

He paused for the smallest of dramatic effects.  

“Seeing someone as strong as Itachi get brought down by the sufferings of his little brother, even if I do not understand it, is satisfactory. Though it may still not happen, which would be unsurprising and expected.”  

“You’re a questionable person, Harao-san,” Mei said in a careful voice of indifference as she fixed her eyes on Sasuke’s unconscious figure without any conviction in the supposed glare.  

The statement earned her a loud laugh.  

“Not what I would call someone after a long talk on philosophy, but enough about me. We still haven’t chatted enough about you yet.”  

“Why is my life any of your concern?” She challenged, closing herself off immediately.  

“Well…” Harao drawled. “If anything in your said life may have anything to do with betrayal and potentially harming the boss, then I think I’m right to say that is every bit of my concern.”  

Mei looked him straight and directly in the eye.  

“Is that an accusation?” She asked, raising a perfect brow.  

“More of a warning,” was the reply. “I’m sure I can bet high money that Kiiroh-sama would not be pleased in the slightest if it was revealed that his own niece was plotting against him, and for that Uchiha brat who she has no chemistry with, specifically. Any execution you’d face for that wouldn’t be slow and painless as would have been expected to be the treatment to his blood, but rather the opposite.”  

With a short wink he trudged himself off from his leaning position in the cell bars and walked away, but not before turning around and waving.  

Finally alone, Mei’s lips pursed and she was left with the sudden urge to break something; preferably not Sasuke’s bones as Kurai would have more than happily done.  

————— 

The Shisui that haunted him beneath his eyelids always watches him get his head dunked in the water with such a mundane expression, and it angers Sasuke.  

His cousin knew what it was like to experience the panic folding into every parts of your brain as it caught on to what was happening, and what might happen.  

His cousin knew the excruciating pain which bloated your lungs and the sharp stinging sensations as the sweetest creation known — oxygen — was deprived so cruelly. 

Something said cousin might not know about, however, was the harsh coughing that would rip through your lungs and would prolong for as long as it wanted as it took in the succulent air, but that only happened to those who emerged. Uchiha Shisui may — as in probably didn’t — have never reached that far.  

Sasuke can imagine the event now, unlike his 7 year old self who blocked any thoughts of the topic from his mind out of pure and extensive grief only. 

He can see Itachi, holding down the dark and messy haired head of their brilliant and prodigal cousin as his Mangekyou slowly came to life with that of his best friend slowly leaving until it eventually diminished.  

It was unlikely, of course, with how the other’s death had been so delicately made to look like an accurate suicide, but it helped to paint and enforce the picture of the monster he knew his brother was anyhow.  

Kurai’s (or Harao’s or maybe Shio’s, Sasuke didn’t remember anymore) large hand pulled at Sasuke’s own head, removing him from the depths of liquid he found himself despising so much as he broke into his routined coughing fit, choking up horrible smelling -- and tasting which he could thank his burning throat for -- water. 

He could feel Kiiroh’s beady eyes surveying him slightly, something he had dutifully become accustomed to. But that didn’t quell the uneasiness.  

The leader inclined his head slowly and carefully, eyes never leaving Sasuke’s face and as a response Kurai grabbed his hair harshly and the rest was lost murkiness and the loud drum-like thumping of blood echoing within his ears.  

The boy sat on the hard and jagged floor in his unguarded cell with his head uncomfortably rested against his knees, Mei having gone to speak with Harao, apparently, from what he could successfully retrieve out of her and Shio’s former, short conversation.  

The water had left him absolutely soaked, though it did, at least, soothe the hissing cuts he had received.  

The bandages covering his arm seemed to have been made with less quality than the one on his finger as the water, along with the little crawl he had done earlier, had left it teared while the one on his nail remained nicely unseen.  

He was mildly grateful as while it did cause him great pain to look at, he could tolerate the words tainting his skin. His index finger sporting nothing but pink and squishy flesh was something he didn’t think he could ever get used to and he hoped to never see it until it had completely healed.  

The bareness of his skin left him shaking, the freezing air having took advantage as it made it it’s goal to make the other feel nothing but pure coldness 

Every breath Sasuke uttered came out in steam and he remembered as a child always racing through the snow and laughing with his mother at the misty huffs.  

He’d do anything to relive those memories, but life had already proven to ultimately dislike him meaning Sasuke would never get such a comfort.  

The pain flowed across his body, engulfind every sense. Heavy thumps echo in his ears, for him to hear and feel only. The open and unhealed cuts were hissing and spitting at the air, which retaliated by beating back angrily.  

His arms, chest and nose were shattered, and blood oozed from unknown places.  

So much for oh-so perfect and God-like Sasuke-kun.  

The one in question instinctively (and shamefully) did a small flinch as the barred door to his cell opened, head warily moving upwards to meet the gaze of the rude one who had interrupted his inner monologues, which belonged to Kiiroh.  

A small feeling of surprise hit on him as a result of the man never having visited him in his very homely cell beforehand, but there’s a first time for everything, after all.  

“Uchiha,” The dirty blonde drawled and Sasuke felt a flash of irritation.  

Why is it that his captors always greet him with that ? 

He summoned enough energy in himself to let out an annoyed retort.  

“What do you want?” He snapped.  

A smirk was his response, and a goddamn infuriating one, at that. 

“You have less than two weeks. How does it feel having death around the corner, boy?”  

Fine, honestly. As Sasuke knew he was going to be long gone before that time came. If Kiiroh and the other’s job was to make him feel on the verge of wanting to die then they were doing an abysmal job.  

Sasuke’s body hurt more than it had ever done before, yes, but his mind was not screeching at him to end everything here and now.  

He didn’t know whether he should feel glee or fear from that fact.  

“Is that all?” The younger asked, raising a brow, an act that still rendered his body tired.  

Kiiroh narrowed his eyes as he looked down at him conceitedly. 

“Something must be done about that mouth of yours if electricity doesn’t help,” He said pleasantly and Sasuke found himself involuntarily paling ever so slightly.  

He didn’t realise Kiiroh was approaching until he was on top of him, thick gauze held tightly in his hand, spawned from a rather deep pocket.  

At once the material was strapped around his mouth, muffling a curse. Kiiroh chuckled and he felt the anger and humiliation burn his skin.  

“Yeah, you’re better like this,” he stated, throwing him to the floor before standing up. “You dog.”  

If Sasuke was a dog, then he would have used his claws to rip that smug smirk off of Kiiroh’s ugly face.  

—-—-—-—- 

There are 7 trillion nerves in the human body, and yet with the constant stupidness and lack of knowledge he emitted, Kurai somehow manages to get on every single one of Shio’s.  

Brawn and muscles is all he has; no brains. Shio wished Kiiroh had assigned him to a different partner more than anything.  
 
Mei is fairly polite and dignified and Harao keeps to himself most of the time, all the qualities the person he’s stuck doesn’t have.  

It aggravates him, but going to Kiiroh and complaining about it would do no good so Shio forced a deep inhale, nails biting into his palm as a way of stop himself from cuffing the blunder of the man on the other side of him around the head as he rambled on about their little captive.  

Uchiha Sasuke was really nothing special. Apart from being the last of his clan and having the sharingan in his possession, his existence ended up holding no relevance.  

Kurai, the disgusting person he is, found the boy attractive but not being a female Shio was unavailable for comment.  

(The only woman he has ever found attractive was her, anyway.) 

On the other hand, his brother, Uchiha Itachi, happens to be the single person who is higher than Kurai on his hate list.  

He killed her without a flicker of remorse on his lined face, glancing at him as if he was nothing before disappearing leaving the corpse of his fiance in his arms, the lipstick around her lips drooling with blood.  

Since then Shio has sworn to himself to avenge his would-be wife and make that monster wish he was never born.  

He wasn’t sure what torturing Sasuke would achieve, but the male trusts what Kiiroh says anyhow. If him not caring about his little brother’s fate was true, then that only strengthened the idea of the man being a monster.  

“Oi, Shio, you listenin’?” Kurai asked, interrupting his thoughts shamelessly and getting rolled eyes in reply.  

“What?” He snapped impatiently.  

The man scoffed, looking at him with a stupid expression of offence.  

“The boss wants to talk to you,” He stated and at once Shio’s posture straightened, attention refocused.  

A few minutes of silence stretched between them, both staring at the other, until the posher male arched an eyebrow.  

“And…?” He inquired.  

“And?” 

Shio’s left eye twitched.  

“When, where, why?”  

Kurai pondered for a moment, his massive hand stroking his chin in a way he obviously thought made him look smart, before his giant shoulders shrugged upwards and then back down.  

“Dunno know,” He said, causing his partner to inhale deeply.  

“Useless blundering oaf,” Shio hissed as he made his way down the dingy hallways, deciding that if he was going to look for Kiiroh, the main office like room they discuss plans in or just rest would be the first place he’d go rather than the his leader’s quarters which was in the opposite direction.  

His guess was a right one, as when he gently knocked on the door of it, he was greeted with the raspy reply of his boss.  

“Kiiroh-sama, you wished to see me?” He said, receiving a smile that didn’t seem to reach the eyes of the blonde.  

“Shio,” He addressed pleasantly. “Come, sit.”  

The male did so, taking a seat opposite the senior who poured two glasses of sake, pushing one towards him before taking the other and bringing into his lips.  

Shio watched his adam’s apple bob as he drank the alcohol warily, not touching his own despite the increasing temptation. 

“Is everything okay?” He asked.  

Kiiroh paused, peering over the glass as he contemplated.  

“It’s not enough,” He finally decided, sighing. Shio glanced at him, brows furrowed.  

“Pardon?” 

“Not enough ,” Kiiroh repeated, voice of irritation. “What we’re doing. Sasuke. It isn’t enough.”  

“How so?”  

“He isn’t suffering. This is mere normal torture for him, something you can get in any old place. What we do to him needs to be unique, something he will never forget,” He explained, sighing as he rubbed his temple in a weary way.   

The male’s eyebrows rose slightly, lips pursing as he stared in mild interest at his leader. 

“And in what way do you plan to achieve that?” He asked, grimacing at thought of Kurai doing his usual ‘no brains, all horribly synchronised brawn’ act and simply beating the Uchiha to the brink of death.  

Kiiroh tsked in reply, fists balling into fists against his knees as he ranted.  

“Absolutely no idea, and I despise that. Aniki deserves to be properly avenged but how am I supposed to that when not even his killer’s younger brother regrets the action?” 

Shio responded by staying silent, head hang low causing the other to sigh.  

“Any potential ideas from you?” He inquired.  

With a frown, Shio shook his head solemnly.  

Kiiroh’s jaw tightened.  

“Ugh, how utterly useless.” 

He leaned over the armchair he was sitting upon, cradling his left cheek in his palm while his other hand tapped lightly against his knee. 

“Well go get Kurai or someone,” He ordered with a wave of said hand. “Pay our friend a visit. It’ll be his second today.” 

Shio’s expression remained blank as he nodded, bowed and left however annoyance and irritation boiled through him, preferring the latter option he was given which was ‘or someone’ to take with him.  

--------------------- 

The world dissolved in his vision, nothing aware to him except the steady thumps in his ears.  

Something itched at the back of his head. A small part of him ached to satisfy it, but his limbs refused to move. He could hear mumbles above him, but it all did the opposite of registering.  

Living was so difficult. 

Drip.   

Stomach, panging every second in starvation.  

Drip.   

Nose, a single, burning, tunnel of air, a consequence of his mouth being sealed. 

Drip.   

Ribs, stabbing into his skin and rearranging his insides at any given moment.  

What is this all for? What is the meaning of ‘survival instincts’?  

(Why is he doing this? Why is he fighting so hard to go through this hell when he can simply die. ) 

Who is he doing this for? Whose life is so important that he’d pass through torture just to see again. 

Except ... he knew that answer. He doesn’t even know why he asked it in the first place.  

He’s doing it for his baby cousins, who never got to utter their first words. 

He’s doing it for his uncles, who’d inspire him with their work in the police force as they brought justice to the Hidden Leaf.  

He’s doing it for his aunts, who would pamper him with gifts and food, the only people caring for his love towards tomatoes.  

He’s doing it for his grandparents who’d recite stories of the First and Second Hokages, speaking of how different the villages were back then.  

He’s doing it for the optimistic girl who could not foresee the monster Itachi would become. Who only ever wanted to be his bride someday.  

He’s doing it for the prodigal boy who was deprived from the sweet substance known as oxygen by his would-be best friend.  

He’s doing it for woman who would make it her life goals to reinstate any confidence he’d lose. Who raised, cared, taught, clothed, bathed and loved him with everything she had.  

He’s doing it for the man who he was so scared of once, so desperate for approval, and now the only wants to see his face one more time even if it is filled with disappointment.   

He’s doing it to make sure that Uchiha Itachi would never see the light of day again. Not to avenge himself, but to avenge them.   

Sasuke owes it to them. He needs to be alive because a dead person cannot kill.  

And that means it doesn’t matter if his world has just faded to black.  

Kurai’s frown was so deep it could fall of his face as he shook the boy by the scruff of his neck, his brows furrowing in legible concern as he eyed Sasuke, expression calm and relaxed as his upper lashes connected with his bottom ones, his lids closed.  

“Unresponsive,” Kurai muttered. “He isn’t...”  

Shio cut his sentence off sharply as he ripped the gag off leaving behind a faint mark over his mouth.  

“Of course not. You can see his chest moving up and down, that means he’s still breathing.” 

“Well I don’t see nothin’,” He shrugged, his massive arms moving upwards in a stiff manner.  

“For Kami’s sak--” 

Sasuke coughed suddenly, a jet of water escaping his lips and hitting Kurai squarely in the face causing him to curse loudly.  

“Oi, you---!” 

“Lay him down on the side,” Shio ordered, suddenly alert, taking a closer step and motioning impatiently at the boy to get his partner to move.  

Sasuke coughed again, a puddle slowly formating upon the floor as Kurai scrambled through it, his large hands steadying themselves on the younger’s body as he rolled him over with no intended gentlesness.  

“He’s getting water all over my clothes,” Kurai complained earning a raised eyebrow from the other.  

“You actually care ?” 

“Nah, but I was told once that wet pants could cause a rash on my ass which would be horrible.”  

Shio refused to reply, biting the inside of his lip to stop himself from letting out a wild shriek. It was his luck that the attention had moved off of him as Sasuke’s eyes fluttered open as he doubled over and sagged into the floor, coughs racking through his body like a rather steamy car engine. 

Vision fuzzy, the only think Sasuke could actually see was bright blue eyes staring down at him. They had tints of concentration and interest in them and then another emotion that his brain was too tired to deal with. 

(Naru--- no. Someone else. Naruto would never look at him like that.)  

“We should leave him to it,” somebody said, the blue eyes creasing as its owner smirked before something was slapped over his mouth leaving him feeling suffocated at once.  

Mr Blue and the other person stood up and Sasuke witnessed the heavier man stumble in the water, lose his footing and slipping as he slid out of his cell leaving his partner to stare at him in pure disbelief and annoyance before he followed in a much more cautious way, criticising the former loudly and angrily the moment he was outside.  

It took Sasuke many minutes to realise they had left the door ajar.  

--------------------- 

Sasuke’s legs shook underneath him, his entire body moaning in protest against the slightest movements in their weakened state, his chest tightening and his head thumping.  

It hurt but Sasuke walked. He trudged through the halls with no end in sight, fearing that in the next corner he walked there would be one of his captors waiting, destroying any chance of escaping.  

For the first time, a clear picture of Team 7 waved into his mind.  

Naruto, with his dazzling smile and overwhelming posessivness and love for his teammates, boldly challenging anyone that was the slightest bit stronger than him and usually ending up with his ass on the ground and some stupid claim that he was going easy on his opponent.  

Sakura, with her cheeks dusted a sickly pink, trying and forever failing to seduce him and by doing so had said things that had made his blood boil so much on their first day as a team, and yet was now making considerable efforts into actually tolerating Naruto as a result. 

Kakashi, so powerful and so aloof and dethatched but still so caring as he held his clan’s eye and gave it the treatment it deserved rather than discard as nothing but a weapon, not giving a single damn about the suffering the previous owner would have had to go through to unlock it.  

Kakashi.   

Strength. That’s all he needed. No sentiment. Kakashi, as his jounin-sensei, would provide him with the means to kill Itachi and then he would go do so and then make sure nothing even remotely similar to this would ever happen again.  

And with that goal deep in his mind, Sasuke made his way down the halls with a heavy limp and stabbing pains in his chest as he, with eyes damp and weakened from the dark, saw something that could be mistaken as sunlight behind a door.  

His steps quickened, became more sluggish, and he tripped over his own feet.  

Water ran down his face as his hair fell over his eyes, still soddened from the earlier dunkings as he lay stomach down on the floor, and wettening his already unsticky gag to the point it was now more or less off, arms useless in pulling his body up with the bones inside snapped into pieces.  

Faint footsteps could be heard approaching him and Sasuke panicked, eyes going back as far as they could to see whoever it was, hoping beyond hoping that it was Mei. 

Pure white and paleness coloured his face as he saw who it was; who they were .   

All 5 of his captors were in the clearing, their outlines only just noticeable.  

Sasuke swore to himself, cursing Shio for having the audacity to break his arms. He tried to bend his knees and rock himself up, but his body was far too weary and there was no success.  

Time ticked by and the others drew nearer, the small conversation that had been humming between them dying out.  

The boy’s mind was spinning, denial standing above all. The word ‘fuck’ was repeated in his head like a mantra, clouding everything over leaving no space for anything.  

A shadow stood over his body and the room seemed to drop in temperature, becoming much colder --- both metaphorically and literally.  

He exhaled slowly, breath stuttering in reply to his stinging lungs, as somebody’s hand drew nearer until it was just centimetres away from his skin.  

But then... a loud squawk followed by the sound of Kiioh yelling.  

Sasuke’s head throbbed as he tilted it, eyes hazy as he saw something black flapping violently at Kiiroh’s face and the latter beating it furiously to until he caught hand of the ends of its tail and threw it harshly away.  

“You absolute bastard!” Kiiroh howled, slamming his foot on the back of the boy’s head with full force. 

“Oji-san...” Mei started, warningly from behind him.  

“Do you know what these disgusting crows mean? Who they symbolise,” Kiiroh spat, completely ignoring her. “They’re the summons of your brother! He’s here, you’ve brought him to us!” 

The pressure of the sole of his shoe resting on Sasuke’s upper nape became heavier and he grunted at it, side eying the other with hatred. 

Crow or not, Itachi isn’t here. Sasuke won’t let him be. He can’t allow the man to see him in a pathetic state such as this.  

With the greatest effort it could take, despite every urge in his body begging him not to, Sasuke swore at the ugly freak.  

“Fuck you.” 

Rage spiked in the man’s face at once and he was suddenly flipped over, the bondages on his hands suddenly off leaving his aching shoulder blades finally the chance to change position, but the relief was short.  

Sasuke heard it before he felt it; the sickening slice as metal tore open his skin and squelched as it pushed in deeper.  

His mind blanked at the rest, but he was pretty sure he had screamed as the knife cut a hole through his hand, every vein in his body burning in actual hellish pain.  

“Shut up!” Kiiroh ordered, and the back of the knife was hit across his face, causing him to black out for a moment.  

“Stop it, Oji-san!” A new voice was shouting, dull pink hair entering the field of his vision, and he listlessly registered the fact that her hands were on her uncle, pushing him off of him.  

A slap echoed across the hall and he saw Mei beaten to the floor, only to pull herself up with a look of pure loathing in her eyes.  

“Harao, take the boy,” Kiiroh said, a vein pulsing in his temple as he turned to look back at his niece.  

As Sasuke was pulled up harshly and dragged out the room, he looked back at the female and hoped that she was aware of his severe gratefulness surging through his chakra as a third tomoe slowly made its way into his eyes. 

Chapter Text

When Uchiha Sasuke had first disappeared, Hiruzen had kidded himself into believing that nothing serious had happened, that the boy would simply appear the next day or two in a foul mood like always and things would go on like normal. Now, with a week and half gone with no sign of him, the old man was in quite a panic.  

5 years ago he had promised Itachi that no harm will ever reach Sasuke as part of their fateful deal. Now, the boy could be dead and they’d have no idea.  

A fist pounded against the door, knocking, and Hiruzen sighed, reshuffling the files on his desk and putting them to the other side. 

“Come in,” He said, eyes immediately darkening at the sight of one of the elders from the council and his supposed friend. 

“Shimura,” He greeted in forcefully pleasant voice. “What brings you here?” 

The bandaged man did not reply to his question, his beady eyes surveying the office before landing back at the sandaime, and then towards the papers he had just put away.  

“Have there been any developments in finding out Uchiha Sasuke’s whereabouts?” Danzo asked with a sense of self-righteous authority in his voice which made the other grimace slightly.  

“No, I’m afraid not.” 

Danzo hummed in reply, his single, visible, eye narrowing. 

“Then,” He began. “I advise we put an end to the search.”  

He sighed wearily at the scandalised look he received. 

“With all due respect, Lord Third, but seeing as our pursuit for the Uchiha is leading us nowhere we must acknowledge that at this point we are simply wasting resources. Many talented Chunin and Jounin who’s help is more needed elsewhere are taking up their time looking for a worthless Genin we might never find. With more than a week and half gone and nothing to go one, we need to stop.” 

He said this all with the air of a tired man explaining something to a dim toddler and being the student of a man as paranoid as Senju Tobirama, Hiruzen picked up on it.  

“A worthless Genin?” He repeated. “Have you forgotten what the village stands for? The reason why Lord First and Madara Uchiha built it in the first place?” 

Danzo hung his head low in mock shame.  

“No, I have not, Hogake-sama, but you must understand the political version of this. We’ve seen what Madara and the rest of the Uchihas are capable of. Perhaps having Sasuke disappear is a sign from the deities that the village is better off without that cursed bloodline.”  

“And what we promised to the boy’s brother means nothing to you?” Hiruzen snapped, more harshly than he had meant. “He is a 12-year-old child. What harm can he do?” 

Danzo ignored the last statement, his expression only changing at the mention of the only other Uchiha left.  

“We will not tell Itachi,” He declared. “It’s safer having him think that Sasuke is still safe and under our protection.”  

“No,” Hiruzen stated simply.  

“No?” Danzo repeated, his uncovered eyebrow raising.  

“I already sent a letter to Itachi earlier today. When he receives it, he will return here, and then we’ll discuss what will happen.”  

“You fool,” Danzo growled. “What makes you so delusionally certain that he won’t attack us now that the only leverage we had against him is gone?” 

Hiruzen debunked that. 

“That man has had the Will of Fire nailed into his head since he was a toddler, and too much of it. I’m afraid at this point he is more Shinobi then he is brother and that isn’t necessarily a good thing.”  

“You are blinded by your stupidly kind heart!” Danzo shouted. “If you knew what was good for you and Konoha then you should’ve assassinated Itachi and Sasuke the moment he got rid of the Uchiha clan along with locking the 9-tails up where he deserves!” 

Hiruzen straightened his back, face darkening.  

“ Naruto is not the topic of our dicussion, Shimura. And nothing you say will stop the letter that is already on its way to Itachi. You are too late and are now dismissed.” 

Danzo threw one last dirty look at his rival before storming away, slamming the door behind him like an enraged toddler.  

Once he was gone, Hirzuen absentmindedly began tapping on his desk, sighing heavily as he wondered whether or not he had done the correct thing.  

-------------------------  

Sasuke found himself dreaming of a world where everything was right. One where Itachi hadn’t betrayed them, where his mother was still there to kiss him goodnight and his father was still smiling at him in a discreet but proud way. 

A world where he and Naruto were unburdened by their trauma, were normal 12-year-old genins learning how to channel their chakra to climb a tree for the first time. Where Naruto was laughing in his ear and Sasuke didn’t have to worry for the death-battle that was inevitable.  

Where he was in Konoha, with his team. And where Itachi’s psychoticness hadn’t led him here.  

A world where Sasuke didn’t wake up and then wish he hadn’t.  

----

The moment Sasuke had woken up, he found his shoulders were stiff and his arms numbly tied over his head, conjoining his wrists.  

He felt nothing in them, could do nothing with them. They were shattered and utterly useless, the tip of his fingers bare and disgusting as a result of the nail Kurai had ripped off what at the time that now felt like years ago. 

God knows how long he had been in this position. Hours, days, weeks... minutes.   

His body either burnt all over in an absolute hellish pain, or was completely numb and devoid of all feeling, a simple stretch of skin shaped as a body part.  

His palm had a hole in it and the pain cursed his veins, the cold air beating on the open wound. He could hear the steady drips of liquid, could feel his own wet blood trickling down his arm as the rope in which he was tied with dug deeply into his wrists, bit and clawed at them. His arm rubbed against the rough concrete walls creating more merry wounds to increase his chances of get blood-loss. 

In addition, his back ached from hunching, his neck sporting an unsatisfactory pull of the muscle and his eyes were hazy as he stared down at the floor, that being the only thing his pupils have registered since he awoken.  

In the back of his mind, Sasuke wondered if Mei was all right. She had been thrown to the floor by her uncle like a ragdoll and since he had lost consciosness while Harao dragged him back towards his cell and ended up waking up in this position he hasn’t seen her at all, in fact he had seen none of his captors since then.  

The hunger was showing, his stomach inwardly begging for food, insides lurching with each pang. He wasn’t thirsty. It was too cold and water was still soddening him and falling onto his face, dripping onto his lips and into his mouth.  

Perhaps they weren’t going to come back, he thought idly. Perhaps he has already spent his three weeks here and they were simply going to leave him to die a horrible death of starvation.  

Sasuke hated the way it was frightening to think about. The way a cold feeling of dread passed over him.  

He can’t die--- he can’t face his family again without bringing justice to them; without killing Itachi.  

Shio’s face rippled in his mind and he had a vague memory of a knife against his skin, moving artistically in it, forming letters which formed into words which finally formed a sentence.  

(The single letter ‘K’ on his right arm...) 
 

(...A Bastard’s otouto on his left.) 

-------------------------  

Itachi read the short letter he had uncoded once, and then a second time, then finally a third where he had activated his sharingan to prove that this letter was indeed genuine and not just an insanely cruel prank.  

The Uchiha’s lips thinned, his brows furrowing slightly. This was his outwardly reaction, but on his inside there was a storm.  

Weasel, ( イタチ、)  

Report back at once-- he’s missing. ( すぐに報告してください。彼は行方不明です。)  

“Yo Itachi, you good?” Kisame asked, walking into the forest clearing where the two men were standing and after memorising the words, Itachi quickly used amaterasu to burn the letter. 

Itachi frowned as he turned to look at his partner who, despite being a rogue ninja and a terrorist, was genuinely a good man. It’s this that made him feel a small sense of guilt, but he pushed it away. Sasuke is what is his priority right now, not the feelings of a missing-nin.  

“Kisame,” Itachi said carefully. “I need to leave. I’ll make contact with Leader-sama first, but I have something I need to take care of.”  

The swordsman blinked, staring at the younger one with shock. “ What ?” He replied. “Is Pain even going to let you now that we finally have the plan have in motion?” 

Pain wasn’t the person Itachi would be requesting his leave to, but Kisame didn’t need to know that.  

“He will.”  

Kisame stared at him for a little longer, to which he reciprocated, before letting out a deep sigh and shaking his head, eyes closed as he muttered a small and indignant ‘kids!’  

Itachi watched the man walk away thinking that if he had been anyone else then he would’ve been offended by the comment. Instead, he just came up with a witty argument to the voices in his head about how Deidara, the youngest of the Akatsuki who was, indeed, only a teenage kid, would blow up all the sharks in the ocean if he found out the other had said that.  

Thankfully, Madara approved of his request after surveying his hologram for a few seconds, eyes still narrowing nonetheless. 

Back in the forest, he glanced at where Kisame had walked from, likely using this as an opportunity to go do his own stuff, too, and then began his journey in the opposite direction towards Konoha.  

-------------------------  

No one in the remaining three of Team 7 talked about Sasuke’s disappearance after the initial questions. Nobody else in Konoha 9 even knew he was gone apart from the senseis who tiptoed around Kakashi and treated him with such care that it made him sick, Gai being the only reason he hasn’t lost his sanity along with his former Genin team and now the brat in his new one.  

The lack of the boy’s presence had clear affects, though. Naruto and Sakura were snappy with each other, painstakingly so, and they both using their constant arguments as a coping strategy; a distraction from the grief. 

As Kakashi watched them yell at each other from afar, he couldn’t help but blame himself.  

It was supposed to be a simple D-Rank mission (Hah! You would have thought he would’ve stopped making that mistake after the Land of Waves) so he had sent Sasuke to deliver something to their client as they cleaned the river, only for a few hours to pass with no sign of the boy.  

Eventually they had found his headband, covered in blood, which the medics later confirmed to be Sasuke’s.  

Sakura had screamed when she had seen it. Naruto, on the other hand, had stayed silent, his eyes wide and drifting to the memories of Sasuke limp in his arms, needles piercing every part of his body.  

Kakashi had shown no reaction apart from tighteing his hold on the headband and flinching slightly at when he had first seen Sasuke’s blood.  

But that didn’t mean he couldn’t feel his heart shattering into pieces.  

He had sworn to protect the boy, but he couldn’t. And now he was missing, has been gone for thirteen days.  

Was he even still alive? Had his captors taken his eyes? Kakashi hoped to Kami that they had not; he was already cursed with the sight of one eyeless Uchiha whose sharingan was now in his eye-socket.  

These worries were what had him rushing up to the Hokage tower after an anbu who he vaguelly recognised told him that the Sandaime wished to speak, desperate for the potential prospect of news about Sasuke.  

After knocking on the door and receiving a ‘come in’ in return, Kakashi walked inside the room, wholly unprepared for the person that he would see standing opposite the sandaime. 

“ Itachi?!” He breathed, all the air squeezing out of his lungs as he stared at his formed comrade standing so casually with the Hokage as if he hadn’t murdered over a hundred Konoha citizens bringing a clan, his own clan, to extinction and then going rogue.  

Itachi bowed his head in acknowledgment.  

“Kakashi-san.”  

Kakashi turned his eyes towards Hiruzen, gaze demanding an explanation. His student goes missing and then 13 days later the man who made his life hell shows up. Was he behind it? But then he’d be in a T&I cell with his hands cuffed with chakra-sealing handcuffs. Certainly not in the Hokage’s office and free to attack whenever he felt like it.  

Hiruzen had a slightly apologetic look in his eyes as he motioned to the two chairs opposite him, Kakashi taking a seat in one and Itachi saying he’d rather stand.  

Kakashi felt the urge to lift his hitai-ate so he could have his sharingan ready to sense any potential movements that might signal an attack from the other but chose not to after an elaborate stare from the Hokage.  

“Kakashi,” The older man started. “What I’m about to tell you right now is an S-rank secret that can never leave his room, understood?”  

The grey-haired male’s eyebrow rose at the grave tone, suddenly feeling an emotion other than pure perplexion: curiosity.  

“Understood,” He replied, his eyes shifting to Itachi and then back at Hiruzen who had nodded appreciatingly.  

“As you are aware, Itachi here slaughtered the Uchiha clan a little over 5 years ago.”  

Kakashi couldn’t help feeling slightly disappointed he had expected---no, wanted ---news on Sasuke. Not a recollection of the massacre. He still forced himself to stay respectful, nodding to the statement.  

“It became common knowledge, to the adults at least, that it was Fugaku’s eldest son who killed them, and he had done so after snapping at the expectations and the lack of strong opponents. This is a lie. The reality is much different from that.”  

Kakashi’s back straightened, incredibly confused.  

“Hokage-sama...” He said carefully. “Sasuke witnessed him kill the clan and we’ve had a Yamanaka confirm the story already.” 

Hiruzen inclined his head sadly.  

“That is because that fact is indeed true. He killed the clan. But the false thing is the reason why.” The man closed his eyes and massaged his temple in a somber and regretful fashion. “It is probably my greatest mistake as Hokage to have allowed it to happen.”  

From the corner of his eye, Kakashi saw Itachi twitch. Looking at him, he saw that his face was blank, but there was a certain, small, quiver in his body.  

His mind raced, trying to piece together the fragments of information. Why was Itachi here, free and seemingly at ease? What justified the murder of the clan that the Hokage felt so guilty on? 

The questions swirled in his mind, each one more perplexing than the last. As a former anbu, curiosity was not permitted, but a storm of confusion was brewing beneath his calm exterior.  

But the answer to all his questions was horrifying. 

------------- 

By the end of the story Kakashi released a breath he hadn’t realised he was holding and his normally sharp brain was whirling as he slowly processed what he had been told. Amidst the grim overload of information one thing summarised it.  

The Uchiha clan massacre was ordered to happen by Konohagakure.  

Phrases jumped out at him and rang in his ear. The abuse the Uchihas were suffering at the hands of Konoha, the attempted coup in retaliation, Itachi as a double agent, doing it as Danzo assured it was the only way for Sasuke to stay alive and protected.  

Kakashi slowly turned his wide eyes from Hiruzen to Itachi, both of whom were watching him carefully.  

The man struggled with words for a moment, mouth twisting behind his mask, before he bullied a sentence out. 

 
“Why... why are you telling me this?”  

It was Itachi who answered. 

“The Hokage and Danzo failed to keep Sasuke protected. I want to be involved when--” when, not if,“ --you save him. Since you're his sensei I will be supervised by you, Kakashi-san.” 

“But Naruto and Sakura?” 

“He’ll be disguised as a crow,” Hiruzen explained. “Sakura seems to like animals; it will tone down her grief. I’m sure Naruto will come around.”  

Itachi’s lips twisted into a small smile as he bowed. “It will be a pleasure to meet Sasuke’s teammates.” 

Kakashi surveyed the younger boy carefully, his former partner in the anbu. Despite knowing the apparent truth, a slight fear gripped him that this was all a genjutsu played by Itachi, that he was planning to hurt the rest of his kids or was simply toying with them as he was the actual one who was torturing Sasuke in an unknown residency.  

“You... do you really love him?” He asked, standing up.  

Itachi straightened himself from the bow and looked at the other straight in the eye.  

“Yes.”  

-------------------------  

Naruto hates Sasuke. He hates the way the bastard is making him worry about his sorry ass. He hates the dread that piles up inside him, the sleepless nights haunted by nightmares from Sasuke lying dead in a ditch somewhere far away to his lifeless body being cradled by Naruto himself with hundreds of needles stabbing him.  

He hates the somber tension between Team 7, the lack of anything bright and happy, just petty arguments and grief. He hates how all the other teams act like everything is normal. The way that only Ino and Shikamaru had noted Sasuke’s lack in appearance to which Kakashi made an excuse for.  

Another thing he hated; the crow that spent its time on Kakashi’s shoulder after coming out of nowhere.  

Sakura would punch him for even thinking it, but Naruto could feel the crows dark red eyes on him. He swore he could feel it constantly judging him, always watching him.  

It was creepy. 

Perhaps it would make him less paranoid if the thing actually acted like a bird. But it just forever stayed silent, never making any birdy noises and it freaked the blonde out. 

“Kakashi-sensei,” Naruto had once asked. “Can birds be mute?” 

The crow had blinked at him, then tilted its dark feathery head at Kakashi, seemingly waiting for his answer which had been laughter and a simple ‘Mah, maybe’.  

The way it carried itself in such a self-entitled way reminded him of Sasuke. Hell, a lot of the crow made him think of Sasuke. The dark hair (feathers, curse animals and their stupid adjectives), the silent aura, even the red eyes resembled the sharingan in a way.  

It’s almost like he’s Sasuke’s crow brother, he mused. That would be funny. He’d never let Sasuke live it down once he returns and it turns out Uchiha Crow-kun exists. After all nobody would think to kill or interrogate a bird during or after the massacre unless they were on a whole other level of psycho.  

Perhaps that’s another reason he hates the crow; it’s because he also hates Sasuke and an asshole personality can travel in genes, a science Iruka-sensei had beaten into him.  

Maybe this was Sasuke’s substitute for when he’s gone, then. A fitting one, to be fair, but Naruto would rather eat his own foot then replace Sasuke.  

-------------------------  

Unlike many shinobi her age, Sakura had never experienced a proper loss or grief. Naruto and Sasuke were both orphans, and she had reason to expect that Kakashi-sensei was, too.  

Those three never came home to their mother and father smiling warmly at them and asking how their days has been. Those three never had their hormones kick in where they would be determined to contradict everything their parents would say. 

Even Ino has lost people before, her clan being commonly targeted because of how intelligent they were and the classified and important information they tend to hold. Sakura remembers a particular incident where a cousin Ino that had been remarkably close to died on a mission and she had been crying for almost a week.  

All in all, Sakura recognised she was lucky thanks to Sasuke’s cruel but true statement to her back when Team 7 was first formed. Even now with her teammate disappearing there was still a chance he was alive. A chance that she would see him again which everyone else lacked with their dead loved ones.  

But she itched to do something, to help bring Sasuke back. The urge was pushing her off edge and she would take Naruto down with her by snapping regularly at him and instituting stupid bickering.  

This all stopped, however, once Kakashi had shown up to training with a crow perched on his shoulder.  

There was something about the crow that made her feel a sense of calm. That helped her get her head together and think. It silently supported her without probably even knowing let alone meaning to do it. It was silly to think, but the bird’s red eyes were kind and its feathers were a magnificent shade of black.  

“Kakashi-sensei,” she said, watching the crow recoil slightly on a rock as Naruto got up into its face and began a staring contest. “Where did you get this type of crow from? I would like one.”  

Kakashi coughed awkwardly at that and she was met with a feeling of confusion.  

“Uh, well, Sakura, this breed of crow is actually extrmely close to extinction. In fact, it’s one of the two last in the world.”  

“Wow...” The girl breathed. “How did you get it?”  

“It was a gift from the Hokage,” he replied, smiling at the awed expression of his only female student.  

“Do you know where the last one is?” She asked.  

Kakashi’s expression was pained as he shook his head.  

“Well then, I’ll make it my mission to find it,” Sakura said, a smirk travelling across her face as she stared at the crow which was currently being terrorised by Naruto.  

Kakashi, someone who by nature liked good literature, didn’t appreciate the irony and metaphors that had surfaced in this situation.  

-------------------------  

Sasuke constantly drifted into and out of consciousness, his hours awake engulfed in pain and hunger.  

His shoulder blades ached, his wrist sore and itchy from the rope. Whether or not he had been visited during his blissful sleep was unknown to him, but so far he hasn’t seen any of his captors since his failed escape attempt.  

Sasuke needs something to focus on other than the floor or his mind would end up losing grip on the sanity he had painstakingly reserved. He wished there was colour, but his shirt, while once blue, had turned into a dampened grey and the walls were all shades of black.  

For the first time in 5 years, Sasuke didn’t see the red of his brother’s Mangekyou Sharingan whenever he closed his eyes. Instead, he had the man’s voice chide in his ears and Shisui’s corpse stuffed in his face.  

(“You must kill your closest friend just like I did.”)  

Sasuke never asked for, never wanted a rival and yet Uzumaki Naruto had found a way to waltz into his life and leave a permanent mark upon it. 

He shone like a beacon of light, burdened by loneliness but the dazzling star of everybody elses’s life. Sasuke knew that and still allowed his guard to fall. Allowed Uzumaki Naruto become his sun.  

He allowed his sharingan to manifest in the prospect of Naruto being in danger. His friend being in danger.  

(“You must kill your closest friend.”)  

At one time, Sasuke had hoped that he wouldn’t have a close friend to kill. That he would rise above Itachi and avenge his clan without doing it the way his brother said. 

But when said Uzumaki Naruto enters your life, you can’t get him back out of it.  

Sasuke wants him. He hates the boy, but he needs to see his yellow hair. His orange jumpsuit. His blue eyes. 

He flinched. Kurai drifted into his eyes.  

He thought of Sakura instead. Her green eyes, her pink hair (Mei... has she abandoned him?), her red dress...  

Red. 

(Itachi)  

(Itachi)  

(Itachi)  

Sasuke wondered how he could have done this to him. How the brother whom he had once loved, adored and trusted more than anyone or anything in this world could do this to him.  

He remembered a soft head poke, a gentle voice promising to train him next time. Piggyback rides and loving conversations.  

He remembered a shuriken slicing his shoulder, a cold and menacing voice stating how foolish he has always thought him to be. How fake all those seven years of his life had been.  

He hates Itachi. He loved Itachi. There’s a present and past tense.  

He will love Itachi, would be added to the list, something for the future to deal with.  

-------------------------  

Itachi had no way of foreseeing how different everything was, how different Kakashi was.  

Gone was his formidable anbu captain who killed his enemies in cold blood and was nicknamed all kinds of things.  

Now, there was a disgruntled father in his place and two ( there’s supposed to be three) snobby brats he was looking after.  

His little brother’s team was... interesting, to say the least. The nine-tails jinchuriki was an oddball who for some reason seemed to have an endless beef with his crow form. His chakra screamed power, yet his personality proved he wouldn't hurt a fly.  

On the other hand, the pink haired civilian girl on the team was almost normal had it not been for her short temper and knack for punching her whiskered teammate who appeared to have a one-side crush on her.  

He wondered how Sasuke fit in. He knew he did fit in based on Kakashi’s explanation of their snappy behaviour and tension after Sasuke’s disappearance, but even as a kid Sasuke leaned heavily on the introverted side, much like himself.  

Shisui was enough of a friend for both of them.   

Speaking of friends, the only time Itachi is allowed out of his crow form was in Kakashi’s house, the Hatake district, only to realise he had to be extremely careful there.  

A certain Might Gai seemed to have a habit of popping up randomly in the middle of night or day and reminiscent on the lack of domesticness and ‘power of Youth’ between him and Kakashi who would just stare at him incredulously until the glare forced him to leave.  

The way Kakashi handled these frequent visits gave Itachi the strong impression that this was a daily thing that had been going on for years and it gave the man a sense of intrusion.  

Gai had seemed thrilled to meet his crow-self, patting him hard on the head many times in a way that would probably kill an actual crow.  

Kakashi had just apologised awkwardly after. 

Another thing that struck him was how Kakashi never took off his mask. He respected the other man’s privacy, but he couldn’t deny his shock when he found out the mask was worn even when he slept . 

The porn books were also new but he didn’t judge them too hard. Kazuku and Hidan had plenty on them and he remembered Konan giving them an angry yet motherly scolding after they had shown the still underage Deidara some of the spicier parts. 

“Itachi,” The voice of the grey-haired man he had just been thinking about called. “Morph into a crow. You’re going to accompany Team 7 on a mission.” 

The Uchiha’s eyebrow rose. 

“A mission? Are you sure that’s wise given the circumstances?” 

Kakashi shrugged in reply.  

“The Hokage claimed it was because of Naruto’s restless behaviour. He feels the brat needs to do something as a shinobi to get everything out of his system.” 

Itachi noted the way the other stretched the word ‘shinobi’ for a fraction of a second. That’s another thing that has changed --- Kakashi was treating the whole Will of Fire concept a lot differently since he had learned the truth.  

“Is it a D-rank?” He asked, memories flashing to those painstakingly awful and boring missions he would be forced to do when first becoming a genin.  

Kakashi let out a huff of laughter, shaking his head with a fond smile hidden behind his mask. 

“I have no current details, I’m afraid. We’re going to meet up with Naruto and Sakura at the Hokage’s tower.” 

He nodded, pursing his lips.  

HIs brother’s teammates were already there when Kakashi arrived. They looked tired as they glared angrily at him, and Kakashi couldn’t help but acknowledge how they didn’t scream at him for being late as they would’ve usually done.  

“You’re bringing the crow with us?” Naruto asked indignantly,  

“I am,” Kakashi replied and Itachi had to hold back a flinch as the man patted him lightly on the head. 

Sakura’s lips betrayed a small smile, green eyes softening as she looked at him. Sarutobi was right when he stated that the girl was fond of animals. 

(A 4-year-old Sasuke petting the black cats in the compounds with a gentility he revealed only to their pets. He wondered vaguely where the cats were now with nobody left to feed them.)  

The four made their way to the Hokage’s office and Itachi instantly became alerted at the sounds of loud voiced coming from inside.   

Something cold settled in Itachi’s heart as he recognised the second one.  

“---and you told Hatake?! Did Sakumo’s fate not teach you anything?” 

It was only because he was perched on his shoulder did he notice Kakashi’s slight tense in his body language. He otherwise the perfect poker face.  

“That’s enough Shimura,” Hiruzen was now saying. “I now have a genin team to assign a mission to. Kindly leave.”  

After a moment of silence the door to the office swung open in such a harsh manner that Naruto actually jumped.  

Itachi went rigid as he saw the bandaged man responsible for all the hell in his life walk out, spotting the team with narrowed eyes.  

There was a tiny exchange of greetings while Danzo left, his single beady eye that was uncovered by the bandages, the bandages that hid Shisui’s eye, remained on him until he finally turned the corner.  

He looked up at Kakashi whose expression held nothing of what he was feeling, but Itachi could see the anger in his eyes.  

“Uh, Kakashi-sensei. Who was that man and why did he seem to be talking about you?” Sakura asked timidly. 

The man hesitated as he looked down at her, considering what to say.  

“That’s Shimura Danzo, one of the elders from the council,” his eyes narrowed as he continued. “And he’s a very dangerous man. Don’t get on the bad side of him, you, Naruto specially.” 

“Why me?” Naruto grumbled. Sakura just scoffed and explained how he always gets on the bad side of people but Kakashi merely shook his head.  

“Naruto, I mean it. He wouldn’t hesitate to use you.” 

The boy suddenly paled, eyes widening in understanding. Itachi narrowed his own when he realised that the younger one was aware of his jinchuriki status, vividly remembering Sarutobi’s order that he should never find out.  

Sakura looked between the two of them in confusion but didn’t comment. That again was surprising.  

Kakashi knocked respectfully on the office’s door, opening it at the sound of tired approval to enter, holding it out for the genins to enter.  

“Ah,” Hiruzen said, wearily smiling at them. “Good to see you all are well.”  

His gaze flickered to Itachi for a second, before sweeping over the rest of the team.  

“Oi jiji, I’m getting bored! This better be a good mission!” Naruto yelled and Itachi blinked at the lack of formality and the sudden energy that had burst into the blonde.  

Hiruzen smiled again, this time more genuinely, as he nodded.  

“Seems like I won’t be disappointing you today, Naruto, since I am assigning you a C-rank.” 

Kakashi suddenly became alarmed.  

“A C-rank? Are you sure? After what happened the last time I would have thought...” 

Itachi’s stare deepened as he looked from the jounin to the Hokage, both understanding the translation to be a demand to know what had happened. What had happened to his little brother.  

“That turned out to be an A-rank, perhaps S,” Hiruzen carefully explained and Itachi’s crow red eyes widened in horror. “But you all returned alive and with a newly awakened sharingan. And anyway, this time you’ll be safer.”  

“Safer?” Sakura asked, tilting her head to the side. “But without Sasuke-kun with us then how are we safer?”  

“Who said Sasuke makes us stronger?” Naruto asked, though there was a subdued tone in his voice. “I bet we’re weaker with him! After all it was him who almost died against the Haku guy.” 

“Only because he jumped in front of the attack meant for you,” Sakura pointed out and Naruto went red, sputtering out random words to defend himself.  

Itachi’s head slowly turned back to the Hokage’s and suddenly he was glaring daggers.  

Apparently his genin brother had been unknowingly assigned to an A—S-rank mission and had almost died. The only good news is the sharingan which brought him a step further to his plans but since he had already awakened it during the massacre that meant nothing.  

And how was he supposed to be lookig for his brother if he was on some C-ranked mission? 

Kakashi coughed dryly, bringing an end to the Naruto and Sakura’s one of many bickering.  

“So what does are client want us to do?” He asked. “Another escort?”  

Hiruzen shook his head and reached down to open a drawer on is desk, retrieving an envelope.  

“This is a letter that your client sent me containing the details,” He explained handing it to the other. “We don’t actually know their name, though. It was signed off with a simple ‘M’.” 

Kakashi nodded, opening the letter and crouching down so the other two could lean in to read at their own pace. 

Dear Lord Third,     ( 親愛なるサード様、)  

It has come to my attention that some grunts are keeping a boy hostage in a cabin in the smallest forest crossing the border between the Land of Rain and the Land of Grass. I ask that you please come as soon as possible.     (雨の国と草の国との境界を越える最も小さな森の小屋に何人かのイサキが少年を人質に取っていることに気づきました。なるべくお早めにお越しくださいますようお願い申し上げます。)  

--M   

Naruto was still reading by the time Itachi, Kakashi and Sakura were finished and they all respectfully stayed silent to allow him him to quickly get it done.  

“Are you sure this is a C-rank, Hokage-sama?” Kakashi asked. “We don’t even know the person’s name. Who says this isn’t an ambush or something?” 

“Good insight as usual, Kakashi, but I’m sure whatever this ends up being is nothing that you haven’t delt with before.” 

Logically, Itachi would’ve acknowledged the many things that could go wrong in a mission as vague as this involving both Naruto and Sakura. But even so, he couldn’t help the small glimmer of hope that had sparked up at the mention of a boy in captive.  

Perhaps, by Amaterasu’s mercy upon either him or the other Uchiha, then that boy would be Sasuke and they would complete the mission and then return him safely.  

So, for that reason he sent a long, pointed look at Kakashi with his beady crow eyes, all earlier disapproval vanishing.  

After a drawn-out silence the man finally sighed.  

“We’ll take it,” he said.  

Chapter Text

Mei exhaled deeply, eyes shutting as she thought about what she had just done. Her breath stuttered, the involuntary relief that she was now safe in her room, much more luxurious than the small cell Sasuke was locked in, crashing down on her.  

Risks in a plan such as this were inevitable, and with each one she was getting closer to her goal. That didn’t stop the anxiety that would fill her up each time. The thought that this might be the day I get caught invading her mind and leaving her shaking.   

And It might have happened right now with the way Harao had popped up out of nowhere from behind her, luck being on her side as that was the moment the bird took off with the letter which meant the man could not read the traitorous thing and figure out what she had been up to. She definitely needs to be more diligent next time. Had he come one second sooner then all her days of planning would be thrown into a trash can and dumped in a garbage heap which is certainly an embarrassing situation.   

Opening her eyes, Mei steeled herself, adopting her poker face and body-language. She can’t show any signs of weakness, not even in her own room. Who knows how much Harao or her uncle knew. She has to be ready to throw off any suspicions set upon her.  

Sighing, she put on her cloak, opening the door of her room and walking out. Despite the largeness and grandeur of the building, the hallways were dingy and old. Rarely cleaned and as a result coloured in dust and cobwebs. But Mei had long since abandoned her dignity to accept such conditions.  

It was better than the people outside, anyway. And the person being held captive inside, for that matter.   

She met Shio in the hallway and explained to him that she was going out. He simply nodded, not caring beyond the point that he’d have to tell Kiiroh if he asks which was unlikely, anyway.   

Mei stepped outside, the harsh wind beating on her face the moment she did. The sky was grey and the atmosphere dark, but that was far from anything new.   

People parted to give her way as she walked, scuttling around in a hurry, their faces matted with dirt, all of which were low and their gazes averted. Consequences had arisen in the tiny village after the sudden invasion in Ame, and her and her uncle were one of the only few people who still had a fair amount of wealth.   

Mei doesn’t like the reputation that hung in the air behind her, the way the adults were shielding their children’s eyes away, telling them not to look and anger her in any way, but she bore it, even if it pained her to see orphans scattered around on the streets, crying from hunger because she couldn’t use her money to feed them.   

But she has an orphan of her own imprisoned in her house, after all.  

Lost in thought, she didn’t notice the kid who was walking straight in her exact direction into her until the sudden collision and the indignant ‘umph’ from below. Everybody around them stopped, turning around to watch the scene.  

“Hey, watch where you’re going, lady!” The boy she had bumped into yelled, and she had to blink multiple times at the sheer brightness that emitted from him, yellow hair and orange clothes illuminating the dull colours around him, contrasting amazingly with the grey of sky and the brown of the passerby’s clothes.   

It was only after getting over her initial shock did she notice his headband—a hitai ate—and the symbol engraved in it.   

Konoha...  

How? Her letter can’t have arrived already, and even if it had, how the hell are they here so soon?  

Another man walked up, a crow perched on his shoulder and a much younger girl by his side who, she realised with a start, had pink hair similar to her own, except for that fact that Mei’s was more subdued and darker than the girl’s, which popped out almost as fiercely as the boy’s rather... questionable, to be polite (manners seemed to something the boy lacked) choice of colour scheme.  

“I apologise for my student’s behaviour,” The Konoha shinobi said, and Mei did not trust how three quarters of his face was covered. The blonde haired boy was staring up at her with a disgruntled expression, crossing his arms and clearly not standing by his teacher’s apology.  

Mei quickly composed herself and swept her dark red eyes across all of them. “No need to be sorry, leaf-nin.”  

The man didn’t react to the way she said their village’s name with a scathing venom, but the two children together, so in synch it was comical, tensed up and looked at her with wide eyes.   

Oh, how young and ignorant.  

The crow on the man’s shoulder was surveying her with such intensity it felt completely wrong for an animal. It reminded her a lot of the bird that had flown in during Sasuke’s escape attempt and had sent her uncle mad.  

( A blow to her face, so hard she lost balance. A deafening ringing in her ears, a pounding in her head and bruising on her cheek.)  

Mei had been careful to hide it before coming outside, but the crow was staring at her in a way that made her feel naked, all her secrets pouring out.   

She didn’t like it.   

“What brings you here?” She asked, knowing that Sasuke was involved somehow, but not understanding how. They had no way of knowing where he’d be, and her letter can’t have reached the Hokage already with less than half an hour between now and when she had sent it.         

The older shinobi hummed at the question, seemingly pondering it and making no effort to hide his chaotic thought track. Mei’s eyes narrowed at his eventual answer.  

“Would you care to show me which way your forest is?” He was asking innocently. “But not so deep that it is completely cut off from civilisation. So that it holds something as humanly as a cabin.”  

Mei wanted to hiss.   This is bad, she thought agitatedly. This is so bad — except it wasn’t. Maybe, if she utilised this opportunity correctly, then there’s a chance it wouldn’t be.  

No. It isn’t possible.  

“Over there,” she said, pointing at the part of the forest that would take longer to reach the place she had no idea the other had in mind, whose eyebrows had raised.   

“And, my second question, why to Kami should I believe you?”  

Mei blinked at the question, her mind stopping to allow it to sink in, before allowing a small, condescending smile to appear on her lips.  

“Feel free to find someone else willing to look at you, let alone speak.”  

It was true. The moment they were addressed, the people watching immediately looked away hurriedly, as if afraid something utterly terrible would happen if they made eye contact with a member of the group for more than a second.   

The man glanced around for a moment, before turning back at Mei with his single, uncovered eye upturned into a smile.  

“Mah, very well, then. Thank you.”   

Mei watched them walk in the direction she had pointed to, all too aware of the man and crow’s eyes fixed suspiciously upon her.   

-------------------------  

Naruto’s legs felt like they were going to fall off at any second. He had been walking for ages, and Kakashi, like the meany he was, refused to let them have even the tiniest of breaks,  

“Kakashi-sensei,” He moaned, shoulders slumping as he walked at a distinctly slow pace behind the group who were heading in the direction that utterly rude pink haired woman sent them. “Can we stop for a bit? Pleaseee~”   

Kakashi glanced back at him, and his pout disappeared when seeing that the other had surprisingly nodded.  

“Let’s get under the canopy first.”  

Naruto doesn’t know what a ‘canopy’ is, but his face immediately brightened as he rushed forward, clearly eager to reach the objective before allowing his long-awaited reward.   

They got under the trees and the boy happily slumped onto a trunk, sinking into the ground and easily making himself comfortable.   

Sakura was the opposite, fidgeting anxiously and bouncing on the ball of feet and arms wrapped around herself as she looked at Kakashi who was leaning on a tree of his own, fumbling in his pouch for undoubtedly the cursed book; Icha Icha Paradise.   

Naruto made a face of disdain as the crow flew off the man’s shoulder and perched itself on a branch instead just beside Kakashi’s head, spreading and closing its dark wings.  

As much as he wanted to rest, Naruto hated the calm silence between the team, and so he spoke up, because Uzumaki Naruto would always do his best to make silence extinct.  

“So, where are we going?” He asked. Kakashi didn’t answer, simply ignoring him and concentrating only on his perverted book.  

Naruto huffed, his whiskered cheeks puffing up childishly as he did so, and crossed his arms, aiming his next question at beautiful Sakura-chan instead.  

“Hey, Sakura-chan! That woman earlier had pink hair. Do you think she could be related to you in anyway?”  

Sakura sent a small, smile, tightening her hold on herself in a way that made his chest tighten, heart shattering.  

“I doubt it, Naruto.”  

The blonde’s smile flickered, still noticing the tone of her voice; weak and sad for whatever reason.  

“Oh, well, that’s good. She was an ass, anyway.”  

To his delight Sakura chuckled, but for some reason Kakashi sighed and the goddamn crow looked at him with an almost disapproving stare.   

“You can’t just say that to every person who dislikes our village, Naruto. Look at this war-torn place. They have the right to hate what made it this way,” Kakashi said, snapping his book shut.  

Naruto blinked stupidly, looking at his sensei in confusion, before the reality of what that statement ment sunk in and he gasped, head snapping around, taking in the thin civillians and buildings which were barely holding themselves up with a feeling and new view that he didn’t have before.   

“But I do think you have a point. Something about her wasn’t right,” Kakashi finished and this new piece of information would have flown right over the boy’s head had Sakura not spoken.   

“What do you mean?”  

Kakashi just sighed, shrugging with a small hum as he gestured to the crow which interpreted the action by flying up from the branch and taking its trademarked spot on the man’s shoulder.   

Naruto grumbled, annoyed that nobody had answered his or Sakura’s questions and even more so as the rest began walking, ending their break so that they could destroy his poor, innocent feet all over again.  

Fuck, that ‘break’ wasn’t even long! What was the point of it?   

But behind all that annoyance and frustration, his chest lightened at the knowledge that they’d be moving once again. That each step they’d take would bring them closer to finding the kidnapped boy. Because he deserves to be saved.  

And, more importantly, because deep down, he can’t handle this tension. He can’t deal with the gnawing worry coursing through him. That the person they’d find wouldn’t be Sasuke... or worse; it would but he’d be dead.  

He’s never lost someone before. Sure, he is an orphan, but he has never met his parents. He’s used to the loneliness, but he’s not used to having someone there only for them to be ripped away from him.    

Naruto won’t allow Sasuke to be taken from him. Even if it means defying the old man Hokage and hunting down the bastards that kept them away himself.  

Because the only person allowed to harm Sasuke is he himself.  

-------------------------  

Sakura can’t help but feel envious of Naruto. He’s so relaxed. Like he doesn’t have a care in the world about what’s happening right now.    

He isn’t worried that this entire mission might be a trap. He isn’t constantly wondering why Kakashi-sensei accepted it despite being aware of the risks.  

He isn’t sad because they have a member short. He’s acting like he always does. Sasuke not being there changes nothing for him. He’s prancing around like the idiot he is, bumping into random people in a village that so clearly depsises them for reasons that were out of their hands.  

And Kakashi let him. He didn’t do anything about it. It’s almost as like he didn’t care either. The mission was going on just as any other mission would.  

And it’s sickening.  

N aruto was talking to her; complaining in her ear. She’s ignoring him—why can’t he just take the hint and leave her alone?  

(Sasuke scowling at her. The harsh words: “You’re annoying.”)  

No... that’s different. That’s because she needs to win him. She knows he’ll be happy that she kept pursuing him, even if he can’t admit it now.  

But Naruto should know that she’ll never return his feelings. That the only person who will ever be in her heart is the person who is no longer with them, and who might never be with them again. And if the blonde doesn’t accept that, then she’s going to have to break the promise she made to Sasuke of being nice to him.  

“Hey, Sakura-chan, are you okay? You’re pretty quiet,” Naruto said, having paused in his babbling to actually care for his teammate and ask how they were.  

She forced a smile on her face, but it was an awkward tug. There was badly hidden venom in her voice when she replied.  

“I’m fine.”  

Naruto blinked, but otherwise didn’t react. His dazzling smile stayed put, not slipping for even a moment.  

His lack of social interaction makes him utterly clueless to interpreting other people’s emotions. She thought, fingers curling into fists.    

In the corner of her eye, she saw Kakashi glancing back at them. His brows were furrowed, and while it appeared their sensei was as uninterested as he always was, Sakura could feel a slight shiver in his chakra. Almost like a warning.  

Her teeth gritted. How dare he —  

“Sakura-chan,” Naruto said again, his blindingly bright yellow eyebrows drawn together in a pleading fashion. “You’re—”  

Sakura was just about to open her mouth to begin finally let the idiot oaf know what he was; a waste of space, when Kakashi suddenly spoke.  

“Naruto, do you want another break?”  

The other’s face immediately lit up.  

“Really? You’re the man, Kakashi-sensei!”  

Despite what Ino likes to say, Sakura is smart in other things than just book knowledge. She knows Kakashi’s intention. She knows why he made Naruto rest away from her. She knows why he flicked the crow away to sit on a different branch. She knows why he began walking in her direction, and why the outline of his mask expanded, seemingly like he was about to begin speaking. But she didn’t want to hear it.  

She flinched slightly as Kakashi placed a hand on her shoulder and turned her away from the group until they were out of earshot, but didn’t protest, even when her inner self was inflicting a series of punches she knew would realistically never land on their sensei.  

After a few awkward moments of silence, Kakashi finally spoke.  

“Are you okay?” 
 

Sakura couldn’t help the bitter scoff she let out.  

“Is that even a question?” She asked miserably, the fight in her chest suddenly evaporating, leaving nothing but the same empty feeling she when the reality of what Sasuke’s bloody headband on the ground could mean. The feeling of knowing nothing to do with yourself.  

And because it was the only thing her body told her to do, she sank to her knees, barely acknowledging the fact that Kakashi moved and sat down beside her.  

There was another beat of silence, and Kakashi’s next words held a lace of hesitation within them, as if he truly didn’t believe what he was saying.  

“...talking about it will help loosen the pain.”  

“Do you speak from experience?” Sakura asked, not knowing why she cared.  

“No.” Kakashi’s blunt response surprised her. She looked up at him, eyebrows furrowed and lips parted in a silent question. “I’ve never talked about my feelings or thoughts to anybody other than my close friend, Might Gai, and that took years of pestering and concern on his end. Perhaps that’s why you perceive me to be so apathetic.”  

“Then...” Sakura began, looking at the ground. “Why are you telling me to do so?”  

Kakashi let out a breathy laugh, closing his single eye. “There are different coping strategies. They don’t teach you this in the academy because the point of becoming a shinobi is to rid yourself of emotions and alone live for the village you serve.” The man looked behind them, eye focused on the branch in which the crow was resting on. “But all it really does is break you. Physically and emotionally. You’re still young, Sakura. You don’t know the extent. Naruto and Sasuke on the other hand, do know some. Sasuke more so.”  

“His family was massacred...”  

It was her sensei’s nod that made the meaning of the words she had carelessly uttered hit her. Everybody knows the Uchiha clan were dead; even Zabuza who grew up in Kirigakure called the story a tragic one. And yet she had always thought of it as nothing more than a story. The fact that it actually happened, to somebody she knows and loves, never planting itself in her brain.  

They were massacred. All of them gone. Sasuke is the last of his family left and has only just graduated from the academy, not even a teenager.  

They were massacred, killed, slaughtered. The whispers on the first year of when it had happened were endless, and she never paid attention.  

That’s horrible! She thought, and instantly cringes. It’s so meaningless. Sasuke’s family were gone, murdered, and here she is, finding out half a decade later and labelling it with such simple sentences.  

And then the other bit of Kakashi-sensei's words came to light. The only other person in their team, who had caused so much anger and irritation to spark up in her chest.  

“Naruto...”    

She thinks she knows what the other meant when mentioning him. It’s no secret that the people of Konoha despise the boy. Even her parents had seemed like they were about to faint when she had told them, both excitedly and begrudgingly, who were on her team.  

And yet she doesn’t know why. She always just assumed it was because of his stupid pranks or his annoying personality in general (“You’re annoying”) but never something serious. Hell, even now the thought wouldn’t have crossed her had she not just had the realisation about the Uchiha clan.  

She knows nothing, she suddenly realised, eyes widening. She knows absolutely nothing about her teammates, and yet here she is pretending to read their demeanour and the thoughts and getting angry at them for things she just selfishly decided were true.  

She is annoying, and so damn much.  

“Naruto’s suffering, too,” Kakashi-sensei was saying, and the girl forced her brain to tune in. “Sasuke’s disappearance... he hides behind that smile like he always does and pretends to be fine, but in reality it’s eating away at him. Think about that the next time you get irritated at him.”  

And with that, Kakashi stood up and announced they were going to keep moving.  

Naruto got to his feet, cracked his back, and happily thanked Kakashi. Sakura averted her eyes, suddenly ashamed.  

She’s so dumb. So stupid and selfish. How could she think she was the only one who cared? All these traits... she needs to fix that of herself. And the first way she’s going to do that is by...  

She walked up to Naruto, standing closely beside him.  

“Naruto,” she said, watching the way his blue eyes widened, shock she had never noticed before entering his face and body language because she had actually come up to talk to him, even when before it was always just a request that he leaves her and Sasuke alone together or to hit him for some comment he made. But she’s going to change how her relationship with Naruto is. “How are your feet now?”  

As they walked and Naruto babbled on, stopping only when Sakura threw in her own comment to keep the conversation alive, Kakashi looked behind him, eyes crinkling in rare pride.  

-------------------------  

Voices bounced across the room, muffled in a way that made Sasuke think he was drowning. There was a burn in his throat, the moist on his skin barely aiding it.   

“Konoha!”  

“A team of 3.”  

“Copy-nin.”  

Those phrases were bouncing around in the conversation quite a lot, and Sasuke feels like each of them should matter to him. It doesn’t. The only thing that makes Sasuke’s brain move even slightly is the mention of a crow, and he doesn’t even know whether he imagined it or not.   

“Focus,” a voice ordered in his head, hauntingly familiar. “ Don’t let even the smallest piece of information escape you.”  

Sasuke tilted his face subtly upwards, eyes squinting at the colour he had lacked for so long. He despised the fact that he had listened to nii-san Itachi, but he forced the words floating around to connect. To form together and create a legible sentence.   

“For fuck’s sake, it’s fine,” someone was saying. Sasuke winced. Kaa-san would berate whoever had spoken in such foul tone later.   

(Kaa-san died 5 years ago.)  

“We don’t know whether the copy-nin's team is here specifically for him or not. It may just be a coincidence,” The same very rude voice said.   

Another one scoffed.   

“That’s highly unlikely. They're Uchiha’s teammates. They obviously got some sort of tip off.”   

“Elaborate.”  

“I unfortunately can’t as there is obviously no proof and just Mei-chan's word. So call it a hunch or whatever.”  

A sceptical snigger rang around the room, hurting Sasuke’s already buzzing ears.  
 

“Well okay, seer.”  

A fourth voice joined.  

“If what comes out of your mouth isn’t useful then don’t give it to us.”  

Sasuke’s ears began to slowly lose concentration. He struggled to keep a grasp on reality, but black kept on sweeping into his vision. A couple more words got thrown around, before the unmistakeable sound of footsteps began retreating. His hand twitched, trying to half-heartedly shake off the numb feeling spreading in his arm.   

A small breeze shuffled around the air upon him, causing a shiver. His eyes were only a fraction open, but the flash of coloured hair was blinding his light deprived eyes and he winced.  

A hum flowed around his ears. The person was speaking.   

“—I’m sorry, Sasuke-kun, but I don’t trust their sudden appearance.”  

Sasuke barely had enough energy to move his pupil up and fix the person above him with a brief stare. What were they even talking about? Whose sudden appearance?  

The questions pounded uncomfortably in his brain and he winced, allowing his eyelids to flutter closed again. He didn’t acknowledge the person leaving, and instead allowed black to creep up in the corners of his spotted vision and eventually swallow him whole.   

(The carpet stained with red)  

(Spinning eyes staring harshly at her.)  

(A sword dripping with blood)  

Mei tightened her fist, nails digging into the skin of her palm. She’s close, so close. In just under a couple of hours she’ll get the resources to finally escape the world in which she lives in and find another. She’ll finally put an end to her own lack of free will, and Sasuke’s. It was within arm’s distance away, and yet her luck seems to have run out with the things must always go wrong.  

Konoha entering the picture so suddenly could ruin everything so quickly and so easily. They could find Sasuke first, Mei doesn’t doubt that the copy-nin isn’t capable. They’d take the other’s away before she was given her father’s inheritance. Even if she doesn’t get imprisoned, Konoha is the second to last place to go—only after Kiri—if you’re expecting the government to be kind enough and allow you the things to give you a new life. So she sent them somewhere else in the hope of buying time, but she knows it won’t last long.  

It’s selfish to deny the earliness of Sasuke’s freedom, but even in her own plan he’ll get it. So why must the universe be so cruel? 
 

She doesn’t know who brought Konoha here nor does she know why. For anyone else among the group to want to help Sasuke was hilariously unlikely. Ulterior motives were definite.  

And yet she couldn’t think of a person who could have them.  

Except... only one  

...Shit.  

-------------------------  

Kakashi isn’t sure why the Hokage gave them such a vague mission. Actually, screw that, he knows very well. It’s as clear as day. Sarutobi wants to fill his guilty conscious by actually doing something . The question instead is why he himself went along with it.  

He understood Itachi desperation to follow even the smallest of potential leads in Sasuke’s disappearance, and even though Uchiha Itachi was, like him, an anbu which has been trained to remove all emotion from threatening to cloud his judgement, the demoted jounin unfortunately knows how far the clan killer would go for the single sake of his little brother.  

Cold-blooded Kakashi, on the other hand, shouldn’t share that particular sentiment.  

All the people he cares for are already dead.  

There’s one exception and one exception only, and it isn’t any one of his ungrateful, snobby genin brats, even with Minato-sensei's son being a discarded option and the recent pep-talk, in which he opened up a little more than he likes, he gave Sakura.   

So then why did he accept a mission that was so easily an ambush and the one thing he should never bet his money on when he has a set of incomplete brats to look after and the chances that this was genuinely worth anything being so incredibly low.   

But not that he’ll every admit it, the few months he has spent with Team 7 have awakened a feeling he’s forcefully extinguished ever since the death of, well, everyone, in his old one. From boring, mundane chores to near death experiences and then back to chores, the walls in which Kakashi had so diligently built up were now crashing down in a way that even someone as dear to him as Gai was unable to do. All because of his three cute little genins, each one of them mirroring what he had before. And he’s so fucking worried that something will happen to Sasuke like what happened to his father, to Obito, to Rin, to Minato-sensei.   

And because of how fucking worried he is, he’s allowing himself to act irrationally. Because just like Itachi and his father, and unlike the sandaime and the elders, he will go to hell and back to protect the few people he loves and cares about, and angry little Sasuke-chan happens to fit into that small category.   

One of the others who ripped apart that hole, Naruto. tripped over a branch as they walked through the masses of trees and bushes, and, as Sakura stopped to kindly help him up, Kakashi couldn’t help the tiny twinge of annoyance. If there’s any chance that this mission isn’t a waste of time and useless, then he wants to find out quickly.  

(But he immediately hates himself. Because how hypocritical is that? To be angry at Naruto, who is suffering just as much as any of them. How hypocritical is that, to explain to Sakura what the two boys went through against their will for the sole purpose of making her no longer blame Naruto, only to just go and have the exact same stupid thoughts?)  

(Minato-sensei would kill him. No, he’d fucking butcher him.)  

(Naruto deserves better. As does Sakura.)  

Itachi shared a similar sentiment, and they both abused his two remaining genin’s feet. But he can’t bring himself to feel guilty for that particular bit. The kidnapped child is the priority at the moment. And it’s because of that did rare anger explode in his chest when they finally reached their would-be destination.  

The cabin which apparently held the kid was completely demolished. Nothing but wood was left behind.  

-------------------------  

Danzo is angry. Fucking furious because of all this meddling. Weasel’s return, Hatake knowing the truth of the Uchiha Clan Massacre, Sarutobi’s extremely sudden and unexplainable moral takeover. He’s so angry because he spun the web so carefully, and yet it failed to trap any flies.   

Leaking Sasuke’s exact strengths and weaknesses, where and when he was most vulnerable, to his former Black Ops Agent Hao was a calculated move which he knows began the domino chain to vengence-driven Shimura Kuroh, a distant cousin of his who he knows had his brother killed by Itachi during the teen’s earlier months after the massacre and within the Akatsuki, recruiting his own people who Itachi had fucked over to take Sasuke, hence causing Itachi the distress he deserved.  

But he had never meant for Itachi to actually find out. The Uchiha were a clan which deserved to rot in hell, and he’d finish one of the two last ones off in his own subtle way which would point everyone towards bounty hunters while the other slowly dies of that illness he knows he has, no matter how vainly he tried to hide it.   

But since Hiruzen chose now of all times to not take a blind eye to things, the whole situation was slowly tumbling down.   

Danzo knows that Hao sent the letter requesting a mission and knows that Hatake Kakashi the Copy-nin would turn up. Hao was in the anbu longer than the copy-nin and had been a much better bodyguard to himself than Hatake was to the Yondaime. He had no doubt that Hao could beat him and while he was a strong ally, Kakashi of the sharingan isn’t as valuable as people think he is since there’s a whole stack of sharingans just waiting to be used. But Itachi’s presence was a gap in the man’s knowledge, ruining the entire agenda and complicating the matter if Itachi were to recognise who he was—but thankfully the anbu masks prevented the members of from ever seeing each other’s faces, making it a subject of hearing rather than eyesight which Itachi is remarkably inferior at.  

Because Hao had plans for his own which rested solely on their original one’s shoulders. And so does he.  

Danzo will finish what the nidaime started.   

A fist knocked on the door of his office. His beady eyes flickered up and let out an annoyed sigh.  

“I’m occupied.”  

A short pause.  

“Shimura, my friend, it’s Hiruzen.”  

Danzo’s mouth curled into a tight scowl, frustration burning inside of him. He was in no mood to follow the incompetent Hokage’s antics.    

“Still occupied.” 
 

The silence behind the door was more plausible this time and Danzo only wished it was because Sarutobi had turned and left. But the other man had done no such thing,  

“I’m your Hokage , Shimura. You should be grateful I have decided to knock on your door politely instead of barging into your office.” There was a notable amount of steel in his voice and Danzo couldn’t help but scoff at the fact that he chose to abuse his power now when had he done so before he could have prevented the very tragic Uchiha Clan massacre.  

“Then enter graciously and make yourself at home,” Danzo finally said through gritted teeth.  

Hiruzen did so, and it was the lack of Hokage robes that caught the other’s attention first. He was dressed in the get-up he did when fighting and had anybody else from outside of the Land of Fire seen, they would have never guessed this little old man to be the second of the two God of Shinobis.  

“Shimura,” Hiruzen said, settling down in the chair opposite. “I came to rectify the bad foot we left during our last conversation. However, I am aware that the brief episode at door just now only seeded more discord.”  

“Is that so?” Danzo asked, voice tinged with dryness as he raised his only visible eyebrow. “If you truly want what you said then I suggest that to do so you must send Uchiha Itachi back to the Akatsuki as soon as possible.”  

Hiruzen narrowed his wolfish eyes, wearied by age.  

“And you know that I will refuse to do that. What is the reason that makes you so adamant to get rid of him?”  

“Because of the danger he poses!” Danzo replied, voice level rising and firm. “You have already told Hatake Kakashi the truth—who knows who else will find out along the way? Imagine if the rest of Konoha were to find out. What would happen to us. We’d be thrown into jail and treated like nothing more than dogs!”  

The Hokage opened his mouth, only to immediately close it again. A short silence stretched between them before the next statement.  

“I will make sure that does not happen. Young Sasuke won’t find out the truth, nor will anybody else. But Itachi will stay here with us in Konoha until he finds his brother.” He stood up. “We can amend our friendship later, then.”  

Danzo wanted to murder the other man already. “That we can.”  

Said Nidaime would be so disappointed in his successor. But he shouldn’t worry. Danzo will change that. Will become the godaime and steer the village into the direction it needs to go in.  

And if Itachi’s presence ruined his beautifully laid out plan, then it didn't matter. He can execute the Uchiha in a much more satisfying manner once becoming the ruler of the village.  

-------------------------  

Naruto and Sakura don’t know what the broken cabin means, and Itachi can’t deny that the fact doesn’t make all this more painful. They both were circling round it, allowing him and Kakashi privacy.  

“This doesn’t mean whoever the kid is will end up being a lost cause,” Kakashi said, voice low, mask allowing it to look like he wasn’t speaking. “Maybe they just moved once seeing we’d be coming.”  

Itachi stayed silent, noticing the tone in the other’s voice. Despite his words, he didn’t sound very hopeful at all.  

His chest felt tight through the crow feathers. He couldn’t help the irritation, the anger. It was so hard to not just reveal himself right now and look for his brother alone because as much as he liked them, Naruto and Sakura’s clueless faces were infuriating,  

But then again, this entire mission was a gamble. It’s not like finding Sasuke would be so easy. His little brother was probably dead, his eyes plucked out and sold.  

(Shisui, hand outstretched with an eyeball on top of it. Blood running down his cheeks, one side dry and the other wet and fresh.)  

Itachi lowered his crow head and hopped off Kakashi’s shoulder, flying towards the wrecked cabin. Kakashi’s eye followed him, Naruto stepping back the moment they got near each other, evidently not happy with his  nearly invisible presece.  

He surveyed the place, placing a genjutsu over his eyes so that Sakura, who was directly opposite him, couldn’t see the sharingan he had activated.  

There was not even the slightest of hints that anybody had lived in there recently. Not a child, not a grunt, nothing. Nothing but wood was among the wreckage. And it hurt. It hurt to know that the chance this whole thing was of no importance was increasing, and the chance of finding his little brother was lower than ever before.  

But then, his head instantly snapped behind, almost a perfect 180 degrees. Naruto cried out, not expecting the abruptness. He had no doubt that Sakura’s green eyes were also wide, but Kakashi simply followed, his own head turning as they stared at the bushes.  

Through the different angles the sharingan provided, Itachi had seen the way the leaves rustled. He knew someone was coming out before they did and he flew back to Kakashi’s shoulder. Following him, Naruto and Sakura also ran to stand beside their sensei, both in a defensive positions. Kakashi, on the other hand, appeared perfectly relaxed, but the hand that wasn’t in his pocket was resting above his kunai pouch.  

A man with androgynous features stepped out, his grey eyes immediately darted to their headbands, and then to his crow self. There was a faint line of sweat running down his face, a contrast to the cool weather.  

“Konoha...” He muttered and Itachi was instantly drawn to his voice. He had the vague feeling he’s heard it before but didn’t from where from or how. They were on the border of Ame, though. Perhaps he’s come across this civilian when carrying out missions for the Akatsuki.  

Kakashi raised his visible eyebrow, tilting his head to the side as he raised his hand in a questioning manner. “...you are?”  

The man’s own eyebrows knitted together in slight confusion, before his eyes widened. “Ah, I’m Makeda Harao. I sent the letter to your Hokage.”  

“I see,” Kakashi said, and while the genins relaxed themselves, Itachi could still feel the tense in his former anbu captain’s shoulders. “Is this the cabin which you mentioned the boy would be in your letter?”  

“No. It’s on the other side of the forest.”  

There’s still a chance, Itachi thought, a weight he didn’t even realise he had lifting. Slim, but it’s still there.  

Kakashi inclined his head. “Then lead the way.”  

He spoke with confidence. He trusted his own abilities enough to fight and keep his students safe if there were to be an ambush. And even if he didn’t, Itachi was more than capable to handle anything that he could not.  

Naruto groaned about them having to walk more, but nobody payed attention as they followed their client.  

Itachi kept his sharingan on, following each movement of Harao Makeda. The voice still rang through his ears, brain whirling to figure out why it was familiar as his eyes followed even the most miniscule of movements, trying to determine whether his body language hinted at the fact he was lying.  

There was nothing, so either he was telling the truth, or he was an exceptionally good liar. The latter was supported by   the uncanny feelings Itachi received from him.  

“Uh, Harao-san,” Sakura said, voice timid and nervous. “The boy that was taken. Have you ever seen him?”  

Harao turned his head to look at the girl.  

“Only once, kunoichi-chan. When he was first dragged here.”  

Kakashi hummed, his eye seemingly focusing on the man lazily, but there was now resolve in it.  

“What did he look like?”  

“I’m afraid whatever I say isn’t going to be very detailed,” Harao said. “It was only a brief glance.” 
 
“Anything you can remember is useful.” 

“Well, he had dark hair. Spiky, too. In a weid way; sticking up at the back.” The Konoha-nin exchanged glances as Harao paused. “...he also had a familiar clan symbol. One of the more well known ones. But in which it belongs to doesn’t come to my head. A fan with red at the top and white at the bottom.”  

Alarm suddenly ran through Itachi. A fan — red and white.  

(The Uchiwa being sliced open, blood spraying from the back of all its bearers.)   

He looked behind him at Naruto and Sakura’s shocked faces, and then up as he made contact with Kakashi’s wide eyes, mirroring his own.  

“Harao,” Kakashi said, voice firm despite the emotions turmoiling through his body. “Get us there as quickly as possible.”