Chapter Text
Today Uchiha Sasuke turns seven.
It’s hot, late in July, and there’s something sweet on the breeze—baking goods, bonfire smoke, afternoon sunshine. Mother’s busy, Father’s out working, and Itachi brings her to a riverside town not far outside the walls. If their parents knew, they’d be rigid with disapproval. “Do you think I’ll graduate this year?” Sasuke asks as she walks along a long bridge railing, holding his hand for support. “Like you?”
At seven, Itachi became a genin, but at seven, Sasuke is a mess of black hair, and spindly limbs. Her hair never falls in perfect straight lines the way Mother’s does, even now frizzing in the summer heat, and she’s taken to wearing her brother’s hand-me-downs in an effort to stop growing out of her clothes so quickly. In result, her shirts and shorts are always just a size too big, making her arms and legs seem thinner in comparison. Shisui says she looks like a straw doll. She’s more a little girl than Itachi was ever a little boy, and people notice. They comment.
Unlike the chuunin at the Academy, her brother has all the brutal honesty of anyone in their family. “Kunoichi have more lessons than their male counterparts,” he tells her. He walks across the wooden ground, and on the other side of her is the river. In the light of the sunset, the water glows red, the color of her bloodright. “You likely won’t until nine the earliest.”
Etsuko-sensei says that kunoichi are shinobi first, as they’re one in the same, women second, and their lessons are meant to show them how to be both. Sasuke doesn’t care much for learning how to turn femininity into a weapon when she has so many others at her disposal. There’s something comforting about sharp edges and bursts of fire, and the effects they leave; the subtlety of kunoichi studies is lost on her.
“Oh,” is all she says, and goes back to concentrating on her balance.
This is Uchiha Sasuke, age seven, and she has four more months until her life begins.
Though they’re too old for it, and Sasuke knows that, but whenever Itachi returns from a long mission, she still curls up with him on his first night back.
He doesn’t seem to mind, but it bothers their parents. “I know you miss him,” Mother says, back turned as she slices dehydrated seaweed into strips, “but he’s so tired when he returns. He doesn’t need to entertain his little sister.”
Most days, nights are the only time Itachi and Sasuke can really talk to each other. Besides, he’d tell her if he didn’t want her there. “But—”
“You’re seven, Sasuke. You should have enough restraint to wait until morning.” If Itachi were willing to spend time with her during the day, she would, but she’s lucky if she can get him into be with her for more than a couple of hours at once lately. “Come here, dear. Help me with the tofu.”
When he was seven, Itachi had graduated the Academy and became a gennin. The best Sasuke can do is spend time with her mother in the kitchen, making dinner and trying to ignore the sound of the fan rattling the windowpanes. “Mother,” she says as she stands, accepting the knife held out to her, even though she can barely reach the counter, “why did you stop going on missions?”
With a small smile, Mother answers, “Because I had Itachi,” and Sasuke wishes she’d just been born a boy.
Sometimes Shisui smiles, and he looks happy and sad all at the same time. “What do all of these mean?” he says, nodding to the pile of flowers Sasuke has next to her. “Are they for school?”
Itachi is gone for the next week on another mission, and Shisui is acting as her watcher instead. Though her parents don’t mind much if she wanders around alone, her brother and cousin want her to stay with someone older than her when she can manage, because it’s not safe for girls the way it is for boys. She feels bad, forcing Shisui so far out into the woods, but it’s easier to think here than in the compound where there’s always something to hear or see. Unlike her brother, Sasuke’s attention span is very short, and she’s easily distracted.
“I need to make an arrangement addressed to someone,” she says, “which means I can’t make it up. Everyone else is gonna do their parents.”
“Why don’t you?”
“What would I say to them?”
He doesn’t have an answer. Instead he says, “Do it for me.”
If Itachi were here, she’d address it to him, but Shisui isn’t a terrible replacement. That’s all she is to him, too, until her brother gets back. That’s all she ever is to anyone.
Unfortunately for everyone involved, she collects too many scrapes and bruises to be anything more than something less than average.
Flower arranging, unlike weaponry or ninjutsu, is just memorization, but Sasuke’s not the type of girl to write love letters to boys. Her creativity manifests in strategy, or how best to avoid her parents on days she’s done something particularly disappointing. Crafting something meaningful through imagery rather than words isn’t something she’s good at. Etsuko-sensei’s noticed. Yesterday Sasuke had to sit through a lecture on how she needs to focus her studying on more than what her brother can teach her.
“Well, I need at least four,” she says, picking up a bluebell, “and they all need to look good together. This means gratitude. So, I’m grateful for your thoughtfulness—” She selects a pansy, white. In truth, whether Shisui can be considered thoughtful or not is debatable. “—which I also respect you for.” Then comes the daffodil. “I’ll use white again. Are you going on a mission soon?”
“Two days from now. Why?”
As she takes the one white sweetpea she has from the bottom of the pile, she answers, “And goodbye.”
They tie the small bundle together with some twine thread he has for his shuriken before he picks her up, putting her over his back the way Itachi does. “Watch your elbows,” he says. “They’re pointy enough to hurt.”
When they leave, the unwanted flowers stay behind. The ones in her hand she’ll keep in water until morning, and maybe now Etsuko-sensei will stop telling her to act more like a girl.
Simply by her nature, Sasuke doesn’t have any real friends. She has an expectation she needs to live up to, and doesn’t have time for them. But Haruno Sakura, a classmate who sits next to her on lecture days, is nice enough, and sometimes whoever’s picking her up is late, too, so they wait together after school for their respective grownups.
“Hitomi called me Forehead Girl today,” she says one day as they sit on a low wall outside the Academy steps, facing the street. “My forehead isn’t really that big, is it?”
“No way,” Sasuke says. “They’re just jealous ‘cause your hair’s pretty.”
It really is, too, and she’d be lying if she said she weren’t a little jealous herself. Over the years, she’s realized that there’s this general belief that all Uchiha are supposed to be attractive, but maybe that only applies to boys. She’s the first daughter in several generations, and her parents were so surprised they couldn’t even think to give her a girl’s name. Alternatively, Sakura’s name fits her so perfectly it makes a person wonder if her mother can see the future.
Sakura frowns. “No, they’re not,” she says. “You’re lucky. Everyone likes you.”
That’s accurate for their classmates, but not for anyone else in her life. What Sakura doesn’t know is that she’s lucky her parents are proud when she comes home carrying high scores. “My brother says mean people don’t deserve attention,” Sasuke tells the other girl.
“Yeah, but that’s kind of hard when we go to school with them all the time.”
With a shrug, Sasuke says, “You have me.”
As Sakura is clanless, both her parents perpetual gennin, Sasuke’s own wouldn’t approve of their half hearted friendship, but when the other girl smiles, she smiles back anyway.
October brings about the end of this year’s Konoha chuunin exams, and the festival appears in Konoha within the hour. Father says Sasuke can’t go because she’s too young, so Itachi says he’ll bring her, and Mother dresses her in a light blue kimono with pale gold orchids, and a pin with sakura flowers stuck in her bun. Though she doesn’t remember the last Konoha chuunin exam, Sasuke knows they’re a big deal, and this is a big deal, which means there’ll be fireworks over the lake.
For a Hidden Village, Konoha is exceptionally colorful, Itachi and Shisui tell her, but tonight it’s brighter than most. Yukata aren’t traditionally that noticeable, and the boys fade to the background. For once, it’s the girls on display, running around in their yellows and pinks and greens. Sakura is holding hands with her mother, wearing matching kimono of red and white. It’s one of the few instances where everyone sheds their clan emblems, too, and Sasuke can’t tell who’s who just from a quick look at their back.
Within the first half hour, Itachi buys them cherry sweet ice to share, and her a pinwheel of twisted origami paper—purple on the outside, silver revealed whenever the wind twirls it. “You’re being really nice to me, nii-san,” she says, clutching his hand in hers and following him through the crowds. “What did I do?”
Being bad at everything means their parents are disappointed more often than not, and poor scores have lead to her getting in trouble over it more than once. It’s not unusual for Itachi to try and make it up to her. “You haven’t done anything wrong, Sasuke,” he says, and she’s not sure she believes him. “It’s a beautiful night. Enjoy it.”
“Why aren’t you with Kimiko-san?”
Yukimori Kimiko is Itachi’s new, and first, girlfriend, and Sasuke tells herself she isn’t jealous. “Because,” Itachi answers, “I’m spending the night with my nosy little sister.”
The first fireworks go off, high above the trees, exploding into green and gold. There’s nothing wrong with Kimiko, because she’s kind and friendly and a brilliant kunoichi who doesn’t have to wear hand-me-down clothes that make her look like a straw doll. Like Itachi, she’s thirteen, only a couple months older than him. There’s nothing wrong with her, expect there is, because he’s here so rarely already, and she takes up time.
For now, Sasuke puts Kimiko out of her mind, and focuses of enjoying the fireworks with her brother. “I’m not that nosy,” she says, and blows at the pinwheel so hard it spins, making a sound like a kunai cutting through the air.
Shisui used to say Sasuke looks like a straw doll. After his funeral, the comparison becomes all that more appropriate. Though she doesn’t know much about dolls from personal experience, she shares classes with Hyuuga Hinata. All dolls are just set pieces in the end, but the cheap, secondhand aren’t taken out until the nice one is broken.
Even though she doesn’t understand entirely what happened, and no one will explain anything, she knows that for some reason, the rest of her family thinks Itachi caused Shisui’s suicide. This is ridiculous, as anyone who knows him will say, but the attention is enough to make Father wary. With no other children, he’s forced to turn his attention to his daughter, the second child, the prodigal son’s on-sale replacement.
It’s early in the morning, and they stand together on the dock overlooking the water. “You saw how to do it,” he says after demonstrating the family Kanton. “It’s your turn now.”
The direction of the wind means they’re still surrounded by a cloud of smoke, but the Uchiha family blackened their lungs against the effects of fire a long time ago, Father says. Still, her eyes sting, and when she fails on her first try, she wonders if that means there’s something wrong with her.
Father sighs, and walks away. “It was too much to hope for two,” she hears him say, and jumps into the lake the moment he’s gone.
According to Itachi, water is the only time of nature transformation that can overpower fire. She holds herself below the surface until her lungs burn, and the pain blocks out the sound of her father’s voice echoing in her head.
A week later, and Sasuke succeeds. After, it’s Itachi she gets, not Father.
“You’re very good, Sasuke,” he says. “Not many people can learn this at seven.”
“You did, on your first try,” she says, and her brother’s smile is thin. “Can you stay, nii-san? Please? You promised to—”
Then his fingers are there, poking hard at her forehead. “Tomorrow,” he says as she rubs the sore spot. “Wait for me in the clearing.”
With that, he’s gone, and she heads home with smoke rather than water caught in her lungs.
Itachi doesn’t come, so she walks back to the compound, and smells blood before she enters the gate.
What she discovers is her family, dead, in a trail leading to the main house. She doesn’t need to examine closely or see faces to know who everyone is, but she doesn’t allow herself time to panic or grieve. She knows without really knowing that her parents and Itachi aren’t among the dead. All that matters now is finding them. After that, she can let herself feel everything.
As she reaches the front door of her house, she catches sight of a figure on an electrical pole, crouched down with red eyes reflecting the moonlight. Before she can react, Itachi’s voice calls, “Sasuke, don’t!” from inside.
For the first time in years, she ignores him, too afraid to do anything else, and pulls open the door. The scene she walks into isn’t what she expected, and she thought she was done with surprises for the night.
Itachi runs the blade of his katana across Mother’s throat at the same moment Sasuke enters, and she drops heavy to the ground over Father’s body. “Itachi,” Sasuke hears herself say. “Itachi.”
The genjutsu hits her suddenly. She falls out of time, watches the killings through her brother’s eyes for hours, and wakes gasping on the floor as he walks right past her. It felt like hours, but it was over so fast she didn’t have time to scream.
On a certain level, Sasuke knows it makes little sense. On another, she knows she’s right. She catches up with her brother before he’s even left the compound. “This isn’t you,” she says, and he turns. “Who’s making you do it?”
There’re tears running down his face. “No one,” he answers. “I wanted to. I’d kill you, too, if you were worth killing.”
“No, you wouldn’t, you’re my brother, you—” She stops. In the corner of her vision, she can see Kimiko's body, run through. Then, desperate, “Take me with you.”
His eyes flash, but her world is clear as day, bright in the same overexposed way the festival was, tinted red, and she sees the genjutsu as it comes. Instinctively, she deflects it, and in the last moment, hears her brother say, “No, Sasuke, it isn’t developed!”
Then the world is black and painful, and Sasuke is so very, very afraid.
The man on the electrical pole’s name is Uncle Madara.
He isn’t really Sasuke’s uncle, of course, but he’s family, and it’s the only thing they can think of for her to call him. Even though he doesn’t like that Itachi brought her along, he doesn’t complain about it in front of her. “It’s a big and beautiful world out there, Sasuke,” he tells her on the fifth day when they’re to go their separate ways. “Build up your chakra reserves so you can see it.”
“Then will you let me see your face, Ojisan?” she asks, and though both he and Itachi say she’ll be able to see once she can control the Sharingan on her own, she’s not sure if she believes them.
As he ruffles her hair, Uncle Madara answers, “I’ll see you in a few years, kid,” which she thinks means no.
Itachi says she lost her eyesight because she tried to combat the Mangekyo Sharingan with hers, that had only just activated for the first time. He also says she’d be better off in Konoha, but now it’s five days later, and she’s holding his hand in the middle of the forest, if the sounds of the birds and the running stream are anything to by, and she wouldn’t change her decision for anything in the world.
“Watch out for her, Itachi,” Uncle Madara says, and her brother’s fingers tighten around hers. Somewhere above them, a new bird join in the song, and it’s one she’s never heard in Konoha. “Remember what I said.”
Though she doesn’t hear him go, she can feel he’s gone before Itachi even says goodbye. “What was he talking about?”
At seven, there are a lot questions people don’t like to answer for her. “I’ll tell you when you’re older,” her brother says, and runs his fingers through her hair. They catch on knots and tangles, pulling, and Sasuke feels more like straw than ever before.
Supposedly, the Akatsuki is filled with nine very scary, very dangerous missing-nin, and her brother’s joining to keep them away from Konoha, which she’s not allowed to tell anyone. Regardless of his reasoning, or what everyone’s supposed to be, it doesn’t take Sasuke long to decide that collectively, the Akatsuki is about as frightening as a box of angry kittens.
On the first day, there’s a meeting about Itachi’s initiation, and an argument breaks out over Sasuke. It lasts ten minutes before the first woman she’s heard clears her throat, and everyone falls silent; Sasuke feels a sudden quiver through the air, barely there but still tangible, and she realizes it’s fear. Whoever this woman is, she isn’t the leader, but she’s powerful enough to make men afraid of her. Sasuke likes her instantly.
“Uchiha Itachi will become a full member,” the woman says, and then her hand is on Sasuke’s shoulder. “Should anyone lay a finger on this girl, it’s my wrath you’ll deal with. Do we have an understanding, men?”
An agreement is reached, and like that, she changes from little Sasuke, Uchiha Fugaku’s failure of a daughter, to Sasuke-chan, the Akatsuki’s honorary younger sister.