Chapter 35: Thirty-Five
Chapter Text
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE:
"Fuck," Jiraiya said, sounding truly done with everything. "Fucking goddamn child prodigies."
"You think I wouldn't recognise my own kohai's chakra? No matter how he tries to hide it?" Kakashi asked, in a low, dangerous voice. Sansa could recognise that something was very wrong right now, because Tenzo had gone deathly still, Kakashi looked like he was about to snap and 'Setsu' looked like he might... shatter to pieces, actually. There was something very broken about her– his?– chakra.
"Look, Kakashi–" Jiraiya begun, but Kakashi let out a sound that was more animal then human.
"I want the truth, Jiraiya," he snarled. "I want to know why I was told a member of my team cracked and massacred most of his fucking clan when apparently he's a trusted spy!"
"What?" Sansa asked, stunned. "What are you talking about?" She hadn't heard anything about any massacred clans in Konoha, and that felt like something that she should have been told.
"Danzo didn't tell you?" 'Setsu'... or rather, Uchiha Itachi asked quietly.
"He didn't," Sansa admitted. "What happened?"
"Most of the Uchiha clan are dead," Jiraiya told her, after a brief pause in which he glanced over at the other three. Tenzo was still completely non-verbal, staring wide-eyed at Itachi, Kakashi was still glaring murderously and Jiraiya seemed to think it better not to ask Itachi to tell the story. "The only ones left alive were the civilian women and the young, pre-Academy age–"
"–children," Sansa finished for him, her voice barely a whisper.
Jiraiya frowned. "Yes, with the one exception of Itachi-kun's brother. I thought you said you hadn't heard about it?"
"I hadn't," Sansa said, closing her eyes as understanding dawned painfully over her. "Not precisely. But Danzo and I were having tea one day and he asked... he asked me what I would do, if I knew a clan was planning on overthrowing the village leadership," she opened her eyes again, to meet Itachi's. "Treason deserves death," she said quietly, "and that is what I told him... but I did say that I would spare the non-combatant women and children."
There was a dawning understanding now on Kakashi and Tenzo's faces now, while Itachi bowed his head and Jiraiya just looked grim. "The Uchiha were planning a coup," Kakashi said, finally lowering his kunai from Itachi's throat. Itachi lowered his kunai from Kakashi's thigh a moment later.
"They were," he said quietly. "And I was given my orders."
"Then why are you a missing-nin?" Tenzo asked, confused, and Itachi's smile was a false and terrible thing.
"Because Konoha is the nice village," he said wretchedly and Sansa met his eyes.
"I won't apologise," she told him. "If your clan was so dissatisfied with the village then they should have left. When the village was founded and the village charter was written up, there was legislation and amendments included in it that allows clans to secede from Konoha. There are many other villages in the Elemental Nations who would have welcomed the Uchiha in and protected them from retribution. It would still be treason in the eyes of Konoha's leadership, but there's a difference between seeking independence from unjust rule and turning on your liege lord."
"I agree," Itachi said quietly. "That is why I approached the Hokage with concerns about the plans my Clan was making. I wished to prevent civil war from breaking out within the village, even though I was aware of the price my clan would pay for my choice of going forward."
"I don't know if Konoha deserves such loyalty," Sansa admitted. "But I admire you for it. It's always the innocents who suffer when the high-born go to war."
Itachi's mouth curved slightly. "I admire you as well," he said. "Not everyone can claim to influence Danzo the way you did."
"Influence him?" Sansa repeated, startled by the ridiculous conclusion that Itachi had somehow drawn. "It would be far more accurate to say he spent three years influencing me, twisting my thoughts in ways I still don't quite realise and understand." And wasn't that a stinging blow to her pride, one that would smart for some time yet.
"And yet," Itachi said quietly, "apparently you are the reason my orders were changed."
"I'm afraid I don't understand," Sansa said.
"My original orders," Itachi told her, a distant, haunted look settling over his face– or rather, the pretty face of his henge, "were to eliminate every man, woman, child and unborn babe of the Uchiha Clan. The only survivor was to be my younger brother. And then, quite suddenly, those orders changed. I don't think I can quite describe my relief... or my gratitude."
Sansa... Sansa didn't quite know what to say.
Except she did, didn't she?
"I hate to call on that gratitude so soon, as it feels as if it cheapens it and I honestly don't mean it to do such," she said hesitantly, "but I need to speak to an Uchiha about the Sharingan, and I assume that at this point you would be the foremost living expert now?"
Itachi frowned. "I would be, yes," he said, and Sansa could see that the silent spectators to their conversation were leaning in, sharp-eyed with renewed interest.
Sansa focused, channelling her chakra into the storage seal on her arm, removing from it the two Mangekyou Sharingan. "I took these from where they were implanted in Danzo's body," she said quietly. Itachi inhaled sharply, reaching for the bright crimson eye.
"Shisui," he breathed. Sharp gasps echoed around the table.
"He wouldn't," Kakashi said in disbelief. "Not even Danzo could... he wouldn't."
Sansa didn't understand what was so significant about Danzo having this Shisui's eye, but it seemed to be an enormous shock to the other three. She had a feeling things weren't going to get much better.
"It does something special, right? Because it's evolved from the original Sharingan– it's a Mangekyou Sharingan," she said and Itachi nodded slowly.
"Kotoamatsukami," He said softly. "One of the most powerful genjutsu techniques that exist. It's considered to be so dangerous because victims don't even realise that it's been used on them; they believe any implanted memories or ideas are their own. Shisui... he was going to use it on my father and the Elders, when discussions of a coup first came up, to get such talks shut down once and for all. This was nearly a year and a half before the... the massacre actually took place.
"Instead... instead I found him dying by the Naka River, one eye missing, torn from his eye-socket... he gave me the second, told me to protect both the village and the Uchiha name, then jumped off a cliff into the Naka River. I never found out what happened to his other eye. I always suspected... well, I always suspected one of the elders in the clan had demanded he use it on the Hokage," Itachi admitted. "And that when Shisui refused, they tried to... force the issue."
"Wrong elder," Jiraiya said grimly. "What about the other eye?" He gestured to the one Sansa was still holding. "How much trouble is that one going to cause?"
"That depends on just how sentimental your dear sensei still is towards his precious genin teammates," Sansa said darkly. "I know he's sentimental– well, was sentimental– enough about Danzo that he allowed Danzo's attempted assassination of him to slide with no consequences–"
"He what!?" Jiraiya snarled.
"How do you even know about that?" Kakashi asked, sounding shaken.
"Danzo and I had tea– he was lecturing me about the dangers of attachment when you're in a position of leadership," Sansa dismissed, before turning back to the topic at hand, "this," she said, lifting her hand holding the eye, "belonged to Uchiha Kagami. His Mangekyo Sharingan evolved when he witnessed his wife die on a mission. The following mission, Danzo claimed they were ambushed and Kagami's body was never recovered."
"How do you know all that information, about the ambush and Uchiha Kagami?" Jiraiya demanded.
"I told you," Sansa said, inserting a touch of impatience into her voice, "Danzo and I had tea." She paused, wondering how to spin this next part to get what she wanted, then said, "I just want to be sure he didn't use the Kotoamatsukami on me. Is there any way to check?"
"A Yamanaka could try," Jiraiya said with a frown, "but I'm not sure they'd know what to look for. Don't kill me for this, Kakashi, but Itachi is probably the one who'd know what to look for best."
Kakashi looked like he wanted to rip Jiraiya's head off for even daring to say the words out loud. Unfortunately for Kakashi, Jiraiya's suggestion was exactly the one Sansa had wanted someone to make.
"I think it's a good idea," she said softly.
"I would not harm her," Itachi added, and he sounded sincere. "You have my word."
"If you do," Kakashi said, quiet and dangerous. "I will rip your brother apart with my bare hands. Do you understand?" Itachi tensed up then forcibly relaxed himself.
"I understand, taichou," he murmured. Sansa reached over to squeeze Kakashi's hand.
"I'll be fine," she promised, before turning to look into Itachi's eyes. As she watched, they turned from the henged olive brown to a coal black that then spun into pinwheeled crimson red before blurring to a strange black-red pattern that seemed to suck her in.
Moments later, Sansa found herself in her mindscape, standing in the godswood. Above her, the sky still burned bloody red and fathomless black. Itachi stood before her, looking around in wonder at the woods that surrounded them, bone-white weirwoods with their canopy of deep red leaves amidst soft snowfall.
"It usually looks nicer," Sansa admitted and Itachi looked down at her in surprise.
Itachi looked very different when he wasn't henged. Younger, for one– he looked barely three-and-ten, with his long dark hair, dark eyes and pale skin. His features were very fine and his face was very sad. There were bloody tears streaking down his hollow cheeks and Sansa couldn't help but feel a sincere grief for him, for the horrors he'd been forced to commit. Such chains he wore around his soul, such horrors that dragged him down.
"I've never seen a mindscape quite like this," Itachi said softly as he stared at one of the weeping crimson faces carved into the trunk of a weirwood tree.
"Do you want to meet the Nine Tails?" Sansa offered, deciding not to give Kurama's name to one who had not asked for it. It didn't seem polite.
"Somehow, I don't believe it would be happy to see me," Itachi said dryly.
"They prefer they/them pronouns," Sansa corrected. "But you're probably right. The sky is putting them in a bit of a... mood lately." She sighed, looking up at it. "I don't blame them for it, either."
"You lied, to them all," Itachi said softly. "You knew Danzo used the Kotoamatsukami on you."
"It was fairly obvious," Sansa said, with a grimace. "He used the Kotoamatsukami on me moments before Kakashi... removed his head from his neck. I know you said victims don't even realise that it's been used on them, but perhaps it was different for me because I'm a Jinchūriki with a highly developed mindscape. Because I could hear him using it. He said..." she hesitated for a moment, her hand moving to the seal on the back of her neck. She could almost feel the phantom lines of seals leading off it, like puppet strings for her to pull.
"What did he say?" Itachi asked, stepping forwards, one of his hands hovering until she nodded her permission and he let it rest gently on her shoulder.
"He said I was his heiress," Sansa said softly. "He said 'You are the heiress to my empire. You are the heiress to my ideals. You are the heiress to my Will of Fire'." She took a deep, shuddering breath. "He always treated me differently," she admitted in a whisper. "I made an... impression on him, right from the start. It wasn't intentional but debating the economics of trade during wartime and the morality of serving the village at the cost of your humanity at four years old was enough to pique his interest. And I didn't lose it. Despite my hatred for being a shinobi, I unfortunately picked up on both the physical and mental aspects of the training quite well. I graduated from the new recruit program around eleven months after the Hokage so kindly handed me over into Danzo's care."
Here, she gave a twisted smile. "To graduate is intended to kill our humanity," she explained. "We're raised and trained alongside another child our age. We spend every moment of our days together, until we're pitted against each other in a fight to the death. I never even knew her name. I just knew her by her mask. Usagi. The first time I saw her face was when I took it off her corpse."
Itachi looked at her solemnly and Sansa took another shuddering breath before continuing.
"I wasn't assigned a normal mentor, though it took me over a year to realise that," she said quietly. "My mentor didn't just teach me shinobi skills. She taught me everything I needed to know to blend in as a noble lady in a Daimyo's court. And Danzo continued to teach me strategy, politics, history and warfare over tea. He was always grooming me, right from the very beginning. I should have realised. I should have known.
"And I did know, when Kakashi and Tenzo attacked him, that if it looked like I had an injury that possibly endangered my life, he would come straight for me, to try and save me. So I cut just below my throat with a broken pen so it looked as if I was bleeding out. It was how I got him to let down his guard so I could stop his heart with a seal. He didn't care for me, he didn't form attachments to individuals, but he had spent years grooming his replacement, his investment, and he wasn't about to let me die.
"The problem is," Sansa continued, "I don't want Root. I don't want any of his legacy. I don't want to be a shinobi." She looked fiercely up at Itachi. "There is no point to this endless cycle of violence– there is no justice in this world unless we make it. Which is why I need this genjutsu broken. And I don't know if anyone but another Uchiha can break it."
Itachi was silent for a long moment before he looked down at his hand, the one that wasn't on her shoulder. Sansa looked down too and realised he was still holding Shisui's eye, even in the mindscape. After a long moment, Itachi looked back up.
"I can do it," he said quietly. "But I will need a medic-nin first."
~
When Tama-neechan told him he was going to be skipping the Academy for a couple of days, Naruto didn't think too much of it. Sometimes she needed help with jobs the Yaks had given her– she liked to call him her enforcer and he'd finally learned what that meant and in the past few years he'd gotten good at using the red burning stuff she called chakra to scare people who tried to mess with her when she and some of the other boys were rolling up cigarettes or pouring alcohol for their bosses.
Naruto had gotten good at helping them too– he was especially good at sniffing out when the alcohol had been messed with, whether it had been watered down or if bad stuff had been added, even though the strong scent of it stung his nose. But Waka-gashira would always give him extra money when he found tampering and extra money was always good, even after he'd split it with Tama-neechan– she was his boss, after all.
So he wasn't surprised when she told him he was skipping, but when she took him to Baabaa's instead of one of the warehouses or basements where they did their work, Naruto immediately knew something was wrong.
Baabaa was the oldest lady Naruto had ever seen, with arms and legs like twigs, sagging wrinkles, stringy white hair and a voice like the croaking of a murder of crows– or at least that's how Tama-neechan had described it, and Naruto liked how creepy it sounded. Baabaa had been alive before Konoha had even been built. Naruto thought she had probably been an old lady then too, but Tama-neechan didn't think so and Tama-neechan was probably right. Everybody in the Yūkaku called her Baabaa and knew to be nice to her.
"Nobody lives that long," Tama-neechan had explained, "unless they're downright terrifying. She's got as many wrinkles as people have tried ta kill her. Remember that, Komorebi-chan." Naruto had nodded solemnly, because Baabaa had a lot of wrinkles.
Baabaa's house was small and smelled really strong and sort of spicy-smoky. Tama-neechan called it incense and muttered a lot about wanting to know which gods Baabaa prayed to so she could pray to them too.
Baabaa told the coolest stories. Naruto liked the one about the princess bunny and the moon the best, even if it was a bit scary and a lot sad. Baabaa told him about how once there was a lonely princess bunny who ate a forbidden fruit to get special powers to save the other bunnies. But even when she got the power and saved the bunnies, she never stopped being lonely. Then her sons kept stealing power from her until they'd taken all the power from their mama and turned her into a scary monster. That scared them so much they cast a spell which locked her far away on the moon, where she was even more lonely and stuck forever.
Naruto liked that story best because even though the princess bunny was lonely, like he was a lot, she still saved the other bunnies. She was still a hero. Sometimes, when he looked up at the moon, he wondered if he could be as brave and heroic as the lonely princess bunny. Because when he looked around at Konoha, sometimes he just hated. He had his precious people, the people that he loved and cared for, but Konoha had taken his Ko-ane and Ka-ane and his secret parents.
Just like Ko-ane had told him about how his mama was a princess of a place called Uzushio, she'd also told him how his papa was one of the Hokages they talked about at the Academy, the Yondaime, except he couldn't tell anyone about it because it was their special secret and Naruto had promised he wouldn't tell and he'd never break a promise to his Ko-ane. He just missed them all so much though, and it felt like there was nobody he could miss them with. He even missed Inu and Tora! Why had they all left him?
"Are you thinking sad thoughts again?"
Naruto jumped and squeaked, almost falling off his perch on the ledge of Baabaa's kitchen window, facing out towards the veggie garden. "Tooth-pick man!" he accused, pointing at the bandana-wearing man with the funny tooth-pick in his mouth that kept popping up around the place. "Why ya gotta keep appearing outta nowhere," he complained.
"Maybe you're just not observant enough," tooth-pick man teased. Naruto pouted.
"Am too!" he complained. "I'mma ninja!" he puffed out his chest. "I'm in the 'cadamy!"
"Really?" Tooth-pick man looked impressed and Naruto nodded proudly.
"Yeah, dattebayo!"
"Shouldn't you be in class then?" Tooth-pick man asked and Naruto's eyes widened– whoops!
"Um," he said, "I have ta help out today! Baabaa ain't feelin' so good, an' she needs me, but I'm just takin' a quick break. I gotta go back in an' help her soon."
Tooth-pick man smiled. "I'm sure Baabaa appreciates your help," he said.
"What I don't appreciate is you lurking around like a no-good lurker," Baabaa grumbled and Naruto almost fell off the windowsill a second time as Baabaa appeared out of nowhere behind tooth-pick man and hit him across the back of his calves with her walking stick. "What no-good business are you up to now, Genma?" she demanded.
"Just passing on my wisdom to the next generation, Baabaa!" Tooth-pick man said cheerfully.
"Git!" Baabaa ordered and tooth-pick man gave a hasty bow, did some fancy footwork to avoid another blow of the walking stick and waved at Naruto as he left.
"He's super weird, Baabaa," Naruto said solemnly, peering after the disappearing man, and Baabaa laughed croakily.
"Oh, he is," she agreed. "But he's a good one. Remember that, Komorebi-chan." Naruto shrugged but hopped down off the ledge, ducking the lethal walking stick as he did so, copying how tooth-pick man had done a little side-ways step-and-skip.
Okay, so maybe there had been some wisdom that the tooth-pick man had passed on after all.
A/N: So I have regrets. So many regrets. I should be doing 1) my final assignments, 2) revision for my flag-test, 3) revision for my exams. But I'm really obsessed with this story right now. Whoops :D Anyway, hope you enjoyed!