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In Suna they know that what they are doing is treason, and that if they get caught they will lose their heads for it. As a shinobi you can either support the Kazekage and the daimyou of wind country by extension, or you oppose the both of them and become a wanted man. Or woman.
In Konoha things are… different.
Akashi learnt about politics as a boy. No child of a kage can walk through their world blind to its workings, but even then his teachers cared only so much for the intricate differences in systems between one elemental nation and the other.
The ninja of fire country are passionate; they are loud in their believes and violent in defending them, but their connection to their country isn't the same bond that Suna shinobi have. Theirs is forged by thirst, by the desperate need for water in the desert, by the knowledge that they live on a group of islands in an ocean of sand.
In the land of fire however loyalties are different. They would die for their comrades, they would die for the Hokage, but none of them would die for the daimyou on their own free will.
"Look," Kizuna explains, "To us the daimyou is a nuisance. We need him and his money to keep Konohagakure alive and thriving, but he also needs her to stay in power. Hokage and daimyou have never fought in the history of fire country, because if they did it would break our country apart. We'd have no legal system, no law enforcement, no nothing."
He turns his eyes away uncomfortably when he says the last word, and Akashi begins to understand, just a little.
In Suna support for one leader is always a support for the other, for they grow up with the knowledge that without the daimyou spending his resources to keep the desert out of their oases they would all be dead, no matter how powerful they are. Shinobi are warriors, not architects or farmers or clerks. He learnt how to burn crops, not how to grow them.
Here, in a land with age-old trees, fertile earth and thousands of fields scattered across the countryside, the role of the daimyou is another. It's order instead of survival.
"So your Hokage will never abandon the daimyou?" he asks the Uchiha finally.
Kizuna's smile is gone. He wrings his hands and then puts them behind his back when he realizes that he is fidgeting.
"To abandon the daimyou would be to abandon all law. It would destroy fire country. Arai will never do that."
"She has to die, then," Sasori answers, cool and collected, detached enough from the situation to realize that this is their only choice. They can't leave her alive, not when she has as many supporters throughout the ranks as the Uchiha make him believe – but honestly, they are so critical to their own judgment that he might as well assume them to overestimate the numbers.
The Uchiha stays silent. His head is thrown back and he is staring at the light filtering through the canopy above them while they walk through a forest on the outskirts of Konoha he still doesn't know the owner of.
Sadness is radiating from his every pore, and he wonders. Wonders how the other man can be that open, can show his pain and regret without fear while walking beside an almost-stranger.
"You know her," he assesses more than asks, and then adds – almost on an afterthought, but it makes more sense the more he thinks about it. "You aren't a shinobi, are you? Your daughter is, but you? …is your brother, even?"
Kizuna turns to face him with a crooked grin on his lips. It takes his breath away for a heartbeat, because it's more shades of broken than he ever expected from a man as buoyant as the younger Uchiha brother.
"They call us Children of War," the Uchiha tells him. "That's what we are, that's what they expected from me and Kichiro, what they feared. Murderers like our father, killers, unhinged and dangerous if left without a watchful eye to monitor us."
Unbidden, Akashi thinks of what his father could bear to tell them of his own past, of the way his village treated him before he died for them. Monster, his head supplies. The guilt and shame on the face of his uncle Kankurou.
"They forbid you?" he presses, mulling over whether or not that was the better of two choices.
"No," Kizuna shakes his head, then snorts. "We were too good, too valuable shinobi to miss out on. We went to the academy; too clever, too bright and too infamous to escape the shadow of our clan. We excelled in it…"
His voice fades away, but not even the softness he speaks the words in can take away the edge of bitterness hidden behind every syllable – Akashi feels the same about being a shinobi now, after so many years. He wonders if it was worth it sometimes, and then pushes the question away because he doesn't think that he can bear the answer.
"Go on."
"I killed a boy, in cold blood, as that was that he had done to our teammate. They awarded me a Chunin vest for it, but it didn't help against the emptiness," he continues, talking more to himself than to Akashi, his dark eyes fixed on a point far away in time. "It was Kichiro who quit, and I followed."
And then, just like this, watching the Uchiha carefully not looking at him, his body coiled to strike, realization hits him. Oh, he thought himself so clever. He thought he knew the reasons for the Uchiha of all people wanting to overthrow their government. Greed, violence, glory, the promise of power. Children of War, indeed.
Akashi runs his hand through his short hair and laughs at his own stupidity.
"You know, when Akane came to me, I thought that you wanted to restore your honor. Glory, revenge even for the wrongs done to your clan…" he explains, crossing eyes with the unreadable gaze of the other man. "It was so easy to believe, and I fell for it."
Pitch black eyes stare into his green ones. Kizuna doesn't look angry or offended, just… defeated. It's the look of an old soldier that has seen too much war in one lifetime.
"Children of War," he mutters again, and the tone of his voice sends an involuntary shiver down Akashi's spine. "My father was one, my uncle was one, Kichiro and me and our siblings are ones, my children are… it's enough. I will help you kill Arai, I will help you kill the daimyou, I will break whatever oath necessary if it means peace for my family."
It's honest, more honest than he thinks Kichiro would have been – but by now he also doubts that the brothers have the same reason for wanting a coup d'état. Maybe this is why Kizuna is telling that much, to make him understand that there is more to the Uchiha clan than meets the eye.
"So who then?" he cuts down to the important question, his voice sharp. "You are willing to kill your kage for peace, your daimyou even, but unwilling to take either's place. Who will be Hokage then, Kizuna, because if you cannot replace her you might as well start murdering the civilians with your own hands."
The Uchiha avoids his eyes and-
"I will."
Sasori didn't hear him. Thirty years as a ninja and he didn't hear a sound, didn't notice even the slightest disturbance in the forest around them.
A man walks out of the shadows of the trees, his footsteps inaudible on the moss that covers the forest floor. He is just another dark silhouette of the many the sunlight creates between the ancient trees.
Akashi has never seen him before. Knows but never saw, because he never set foot into Sunagakure even though it is birthright as much as it is Akashi's.
His build is average, his hair and eyes as dark as those of his father supposedly were, but he sees his face and wants to cry because it's so achingly familiar, a face he hasn't seen in decades, a face that might look at him with as much hatred as this man does when they meet the next time.
It's his hands however that undo him, because Akashi can't help but look at them. They are slender with long fingers, and unmarred by any scars. They are what his own hands never were, graceful and deadly, the hands of a puppeteer.
"Nara Shikano," he whispers, staring at the man with Kankurou's face.
"Cousin."