Chapter Text
78年, 9月
According to a proverb from the Land of Wind, there are four things you can be, in a dessert.
"Temari is a survivor," the Kazekage tells him. "Kankuro is deadly. Gaara will be great. What will you be?"
“What’s the fourth,” he asks.
“Not you.” Sasuke furrows his brows, ready to take offense, and the older man shakes his head. “A sacrifice is not to be your fate.”
He thinks of a childhood ignored, a childhood cut short. He thinks of red eyes and shadows and blood. He thinks of wires and a tree and idiots holding him back. “I am more than willing to sacrifice for my clan,” he spits.
“You would sacrifice for a memory of your clan, warped by time and the words of a convict.” And that. Sasuke doesn’t know why he barely remembers anything from that night apart from the Tsukiyomi, doesn’t know if he’s grateful to not have the rest carved any deeper into his brain or if he wants at least one clear memory of his family’s faces that doesn’t come from bloody nightmares or flat, printed pictures. “You shouldn't be a sacrifice when all they would have wanted is for you to live."
“What would you know,” he mutters. Suna doesn’t have any clans, nor do they hold any true gods. They wouldn’t understand the baying for blood of hundreds, whittled down to one.
"I know that the dead who stand behind me, died in the hope that I wouldn’t," the Kazekage says. “Because we carry on within us a legacy. Because 'that man' has only ever given you empty words and dirty hands, and I cannot fathom why you choose to take them as truth when he is the one responsible for your ghosts.”
They spar on the first morning after making it to Suna. Ground rules are that neither of them can use ninjutsu because that'll aggravate his cursed seal that the Kazekage swears he'll make a better barrier for, but really, this is supposed to work in Sasuke's favor. He isn't proud of the fact that he only knows the Great Fireball and Kakashi's Chidori, but it does mean that he's not as reliant on ninjutsu as the Kazekage must be on his iron—
He ends up pinned to the ground with his arms behind his back in a way that makes him push aside memories of another sensei left behind. Sasuke spits out a mouthful of sand. “The fuck?”
The weight on top of him shifts. “To first blood or incapacitation,” the Kazekage reminds him of the win conditions. “And I do believe that I've just incapacitated you.”
The only reason why Sasuke isn't accusing the older man of using his kekkei-genkai to pull the kunai out of his hand, is because he can feel a bruise forming on his wrist where he was hit with some kind of disarming move. “I need to use my sharingan.”
“Do you, now.” The Kazekage hums. “Why?”
What kind of question is that? “To react to you.”
“Do you think you can handle it without triggering the curse mark?”
Sasuke grits his teeth. “Yes.”
Another hum. “If it starts spreading, you're going to run a lap around the village. While sticking to the walls.”
“Fine.”
Sasuke does not land a blow during their first spar that day. He doesn’t manage it during his second attempt, either, nor the third, and that's when he really does lose control of the mark. The Kazekage pins him down again and Sasuke chokes back a scream as his entire system is flushed with chakra that burns hot and freezing cold all at once—
He blinks, and it's over. The Kazekage sighs, shaking out the hand that was clamped to the base of his neck. “Can you move?”
“Yes.”
He nods. “Take a water break, and then go run that lap.”
The sharp wind bites at his skin, but his pride stings worse. The Kazekage isn’t even using those fucking iron senbon, and Sasuke still can’t land a solid hit. “I know how to wall-walk,” he growls. “I don't need more practice. Fight me again.”
A chiding flick to the back of his head, the motion all at once familiar and yet not. “It’s good to push your limits, but keep in mind that doing so is only beneficial if you know where they are. You misjudged yourself today, and this is the result.” Sasuke does not feel a twinge of guilt at the sight of a chakra burn in the same shape as his curse mark on the man’s palm. “To be clear— I need a break, and you need time to reflect,” the Kazekage says. "We'll spar again tomorrow, Uchiha-kun. Now, off you go.”
The random chunin that Konoha sent to watch him only sticks around for half of the lap. Sasuke spends his first full day in Suna wondering if maybe he's made a mistake, and his first full night in a hotel instead of meeting the kids he was told would be waiting for him because his room wasn't set up yet.
The second day dawns. A man wearing a cloth mask painted with flowers comes to escort him and the chunin guard through the village, and Sasuke makes sure to memorize the route and the winding streets and the illusion of unguarded canyon walls. Not counting the gates at the two entrances and exits, there are ten posts carved into the sandstone and twenty pairs of eyes on the perimeter at all times. Combined with his lack of familiarity with this environment, Sasuke knows that any successful escape from this place will be short-lived.
They arrive at a small compound— no, a manor? The masked man motions for the chunin kunoichi to stay before taking Sasuke around the corner and through a back entrance that looks like a shrine and—
Oh.
Five pairs of onyx eyes peer up at him. “You're late,” the older of the two girls informs him.
“Aniki said you're praying with us today!” The boy beside her declares. “Do you know how?”
Sasuke stares dumbly at the kneeling figure dressed in a tank top and sweatpants, with his hair only half-up in a messy bun. The figure, looking nothing like the regal man that he's known so far, waves at him in a beckoning motion. “Good morning, Uchiha-kun. Don't feel obligated— I just wanted you to watch, before we made our introductions.”
So he watches. The Kazekage lights the stick of incense with an unfamiliar single-handed sign, much like Sasuke has only ever seen from that ice release teen on the bridge in Wave Country, but no one bats an eye. They go in reverse order of age, he thinks. The youngest is small enough to still be stumbling over his words as he thanks some sort of god that Aniki is back and apologizes for ruining a shift with chocolate imagawayaki filling. The next is a quiet little girl who mumbles her prayer. Third comes a boy with a wide-eyed expression, nervously shifting from foot to foot the whole time in a way that makes Sasuke feel like he's intruding. Fourth comes the girl who addressed him first, enunciating her words loud and clear with a tone that reminds him of Ino from back before graduation as she describes perfectly running an errand for some auntie or the other. Last comes the boy who called the Kazekage Aniki, talking excitedly about nicking himself with a shuriken at the Academy because he was busy chatting up a new friend during target practice.
And then the Kazekage himself presses his hands together, bows his head, and… begins speaking in a dialect that Sasuke has never heard before. Judging by the uninterested looks on the other children's faces, they don't understand it, either.
It takes about a minute for the man to straighten back up. “I appreciate your patience,” Sasuke is told. “Kids, this is the cousin that I was telling you about last night. Say hello.”
He doesn't need his sharingan on to match forever-remembered names with faces— Kensei, Chie, Itsuki, Kaede, and Shouta. His clan. Those are his dark eyes and his dark hair and his pale skin that's been threatening to turn red and angry beneath the desert sun, and Sasuke doesn't know what to do when they surround him like a curiosity.
“I'm glad that Nii-sama found you,” Itsuki tells him. “It must have been lonely, with everyone else gone.”
Sasuke swallows. “It was,” he says hoarsely. “I'm— glad he found you guys, too. Are you… happy, here?”
Shouta huffs, crossing his arms. “I'll be happier when we go out for anmitsu. It's my turn to pick, right, Aniki?”
“If that's what the calendar says.”
Kaede rolls her eyes. “We are,” she tells him. “I know you're older than us so you think you have to be responsible, but we're okay. It's just that we only moved into Nii-sama’s home last moon and a bunch of other things changed, so we're still getting used to it.” She looks him up and down. “You can get used to it with us,” she says decisively.
“He's not staying,” Itsuki points out.
“He's a secret,” Kensei shushes the older boy with a finger raised to his lips. “Only our cousin at home, remember?”
Sasuke looks to the Kazekage, who offers him a shrug. “I'll explain over breakfast,” he says. “Come in and say hi to the staff. They spent all day yesterday worrying whether you'd like your room or not.”
Helplessly, Sasuke follows.
They don’t know where they came from or who they are, which makes sense— openly being an Uchiha in Sunagakure invites trouble of the lethal kind that kids their age are helpless against, and also, the massacre happened five years ago. None of them are old enough to remember anything from before their time in Suna, and the elderly who came with them apparently didn’t live long enough to pass anything on. Sasuke is old enough to remember a particularly bad year when he got sick with some kind of illness that swept through Konoha, killing a lot of babies and senior citizens despite the hospital’s best efforts.
He'd suspect an inside job, if it weren't for the dusty box of things that said elderly left behind. Shaky diagrams of the Great Fireball from what is clearly a civilian's general understanding, legends about Amaterasu and Susano’O, even a note about their sharingan despite its status as a clan secret.
What does it mean by ‘evolve’? Sasuke wonders in the privacy of his allotted room. Sage knows the Kazekage wouldn't let him look through the contents of the box inside the home office where it's been kept. A stage past the third tomoe?
Most telling, though, are the letters. A handful addressed to each child, describing what they were named for or who their parents were, assuring them that they were and always would be loved, reminding them to be thankful for— for the last clan head and his wife’s foresight in arranging asylum with Suna, and the Fourth Kazekage and his family for holding up their deal. There's a tear-stained thank-you note addressed to the current Kazekage that Sasuke awkwardly sets aside, and then…
A single letter to that man.
Itachi-kun,
I believed you when you said you didn't kill Shisui, and I believe that there's more to the story behind what you did that night, too. You have your answer to that question you posed to us now, I suppose. More importantly, know that I forgive you. We are all willing to forgive you, if you come back to us and tell your story. These old bones do not have many years left in them, and the children deserve a teacher of our blood.
There is only one of our number who has awakened the blessed eyes, but rest assured that you are thought of, and you will be remembered.
As the moon wanes and waxes,
Fumiko-obachan
Senile. Gods, that's why that man spared who he did. All of these senior citizens had gone completely insane with age, to think that it wasn't his fault.
Still, Sasuke is gentle as he puts everything back into the box, and gentle as he latches it closed. If this is all that's left… well. He has no right to deprive the kids of any of it.
:::::
Onii-sama,
I see why they call this place the Land of Fire, now. Konoha in the autumn season is a sight to behold.
I have been shadowing the esteemed Hokage-sama and Nara’s genin team under Sarutobi Asuma in turns. The less said about the latter’s incessant squabbling, the better. Yamanaka-san is insistent on making me some kind of rival, which I have repeatedly declined by beating her in every spar she challenges me to. In contrast, Nara has no interest in resolving our differences of opinion with a spar. I consider the experience a test of my patience, and would ask for your reasoning behind choosing this arrangement when I return home.
The esteemed Hokage-sama is very efficient at her job, for all that I do not believe she spends as much time in her office as yourself. I hear that the general hospital exalts her return as one might a god, and likewise, morale among Konoha’s general forces have never been higher with their Senju Princess now returned to them. It’s an interesting phenomenon to observe— not altogether dissimilar from our people’s veneration of Chiyo-baasama as Suna’s Grey Death, but her being so far away from the public eye these days makes for a more conceptual than solid role model for young kunoichi. I think I’ve heard more stories of her from Hokage-sama lately than I ever have in my whole life, although it’s difficult to believe that the two of them were fierce rivals back in the day when Hokage-sama has such a youthful appearance. She has recently taken on an apprentice of her own, one whose name you may recall: Haruno Sakura is not someone I would have thought worthy of one of the legendary Sannin’s tutelage, but then, you’ve always had a tendency to see more in people than there appears to be. I’ve taken lunch with her a handful of times, and while my interest has never been so deep in the medical field that I am familiar with all the jargon that plagues her vocabulary, she claims to have chakra control in the ninety-sixth percentile. It's an interesting mutation, considering both of her parents are merchants, but so are Yome’s. I’d say it’s a coincidence that they’re both inclined towards iryo-ninjutsu, but I’ll let you know if the pattern holds true should I meet a third of their kind.
On the topic of learning, Yoshino-san has been incredibly welcoming in allowing me access to the Nara Archives for the purposes of self-study, so long as it's with her son as company. If you could arrange for an assortment of our own material to be sent over so that I may return to Suna with my notes in hand, that would be greatly appreciated.
My love and care as the skies grow colder,
Your sister