Chapter Text
When Obito collaborated with Itachi to massacre their family, he’d agreed to keep his little cousin alive, but he hadn’t intended for her to come along.
“I didn’t mean to,” Itachi says after the girl falls asleep, carried on his back. Stick-like arms protrude from baggy sleeves and pant legs, and her hair is just as messy as the real Madara’s had been. “She blinded herself resisting the Tsukuyomi with a Sharingan she developed five minutes earlier. Konoha never would’ve let her continue at the Academy. What life would she have there?”
She makes a soft sound in her sleep, fingers loosely bunching in the fabric of Itachi’s shirt. “Where you’re going is filled with S-class, international criminals,” Obito says, “and predominantly made of men. She’s seven.”
Lowering his gaze, Itachi says, “I know. I saw no other option. She’s my sister.”
Though the real Madara had siblings, Obito never had the privilege. The closest he had was a girl he loved, and the boy who killed her. Sometimes he does wonder if he’d just been fast enough to save Rin, and the relationship might be different, but he thinks he understands. “Be careful, Itachi,” he says. “Train her and make her useful if you want her to be safe.”
Nagato and Konan might be soft enough to leave the girl alone, but the same can’t be said for the rest. “I understand,” Itachi says, and Obito thinks his cousin still has a lot to learn.
With Sasuke’s undeveloped chakra, maintaining her Sharingan long enough to see more than an hour at most is difficult. She runs her hands along the walls to see, but walks into door frames and furniture, and as Itachi’s still in a period of close watch, he becomes his sister’s eyes for now.
Since the time she could walk, her hand’s always found its way into his so he could lead her along, half a step ahead. Itachi should’ve known it wouldn’t change any time soon. As guilty as he feels for bringing her along, sometimes he looks at her, eyes darker than his and so light she’s soundless against the wooden floors, and still can’t help but think of how fortunate he is. Everything went so wrong; she wasn’t meant to not believe him, she wasn’t meant to go blind, and she was meant to come. Regardless, here she is anyway, bitten nails digging into the sides of his palm and small smile on her face whenever she focuses long enough on his voice for her eyes to find him directly.
In Konoha, she was held to a position of second best, and never quite good enough. He makes certain that here she doesn’t have the same high expectations that drove her to dropped shoulders and wilted smiles. “I can make it from the kitchens to the room all by myself,” she says one night as she crawls under the covers. The blankets are soft, though nothing like home, and Itachi isn’t sure if he misses his parents or Shisui more. “I didn’t even walk into anything.”
She acts as though she misses Konoha far less than Itachi does, but her nightmares say differently. The light in the room is still on, drowning out the moon’s glow that slides between the cracks in the curtain, throwing long shadows against the wall. His is too tall, too thin, and hers non-existent. She might be able to make it to and from the kitchens on her own, but tomorrow she’ll still need to take his hand to reach the bathroom, and help with the toothbrush and toothpaste. This is entirely his fault, and he doesn’t understand how she can act so cheerful.
“That’s very good,” he says, and kisses her forehead. “Get some sleep, Sasuke. You must be tired.”
The hour or so she can use her Sharingan in a day to memorize the layout of the Akatsuki’s hideout is enough to exhaust her, and she tries a little more each day. “Yeah,” she says, hugging his arm, the only place she can reach without feeling around. “Goodnight, nii-san.”
It’s only ten, and he has nothing else to do for the rest of the night. Her blindness means light no longer bothers her, though, and he settles into his own bed to read until he’s tired enough to sleep.
Sending the Uchiha boy out on missions leaves the little one to navigate alone, and walk into people coming around corners. Konan’s taken a liking to the girl, as has many of others, Nagato’s heard, but they can only help her to a certain degree. Even he has his time without duty to the Akatsuki or his village, and he knows what it’s like to have eyes that hurt, and to witness family die. Little Sasuke is an orphan in a sea of many, and though from a village other than here, there’s no harm in helping a child in need.
Going to her is difficult, so she comes to him, using her Sharingan to find her way. “I can teach you to see without your eyes,” he tells her. “The world is a vast and dangerous place, and you can’t find your path holding your brother’s hand.”
She’s very much like Yahiko, filled with a determination made of something more durable than water, more protective than selfish. “I know,” she says, and smiles, tucking her arms behind her back. “I’ll need to return the favor eventually, right?”
There’s a raw talent in her she doesn’t seem aware of yet, or she never would’ve made it this far. Though young, Nagato believes she can learn what she puts her mind to. “You’re right,” he says. “Now listen closely, because I’m going to teach you how to feel without touch.”
Every shinobi has a sixth sense in feeling chakra, life’s force found in every human, but all living things send off their signals. Drafts break around inanimate objects in abandoned rooms; water ripples where it meets resistance, or where feet brush the surface. Birds’ wings quiver the air, forest creatures send vibrations through the ground, and the world wants to be acknowledged. Every sound, smell, and sensation is just as important as sight, and all little Sasuke needs to do is learn how to pay attention.
She listens with an focus that’s admirable, and promises to give him updates on her progress. “Thank you, Pein-sama,” she says with all the respect of a young girl raised in a formal household. “I won’t fail.”
Regardless of what Uchiha Itachi must see in his dream, he didn’t break his sister, but transform her, and Nagato has no doubt she’ll succeed.
As much as Deidara doesn’t like Itachi, it’s hard not to like his sister. In the end, it’s just that she’s great, because there aren’t many blind little girls who can use chakra to run through the treetops of forest fast enough to look as though they’re flying. She has better aim than most kids her age, and listens so attentively to his stories about his different masterpieces that he knows she’s going places. Unlike her brother, she’s going to understand destruction as well as she does creation.
He can’t show her most of his techniques, but he can help her out with taijutsu. “Your brother’s so focused speed and dodging,” he says as she looks up at him with big red and black eyes, “but that’s because he’s too worried to teach you offense. Well, I think offense is what’s going to save your life, kid, so I’m going to teach you how to kill people. Got it?”
They’re in the training room at Ame headquarters, both in clothes good for training. With its half-padded floor and square shape, it’s perfect for someone who’s going to be knocked around more often than not. She says, “Can I use my Sharingan to help me learn faster?”
The Sharingan seems like cheating, but she’s blind without it, and an advantage is always better than a disadvantage. As a missing-nin, he shouldn’t complain much about doing something the dishonorable way to begin with. “Yeah, go crazy,” he answers, and is rewarded by a smile revealing a missing canine tooth lost just last week.
With her Sharingan, she learns faster than anyone he’s ever seen, and then adapts it into the same agile style her brother has. It’s not mastered or perfected, but it’s the quickest progress he’s seen in a while. Her advantage is also her weakness, though, and eventually, the red fades back to dark grey, and she falls to her back in exhaustion. If the floor weren’t padded, Deidara’s sure that would’ve hurt a lot.
“That was fun,” she says, useless eyes directed unfocused to the ceiling. “Can we do it again next time you’re around, Deidara-san?”
“Of course, Sasuke-chan,” he says. “And by the end of my tutelage, I’ll make sure you can kill man a hundred different ways.”
Her smile’s a smirk, one corner of her mouth turning upwards. For a kid, she’s adorable, but she’s older, she’s going to be a work of art.
The men may teach Sasuke their style of fighting as much as they want, but she’s still not one of them, and it’s Konan who shows what she needs to know.
“You’re going to fight without your Sharingan,” Konan says, and Sasuke obediently allows her eyes to become sightless once again. Rather than the training room, they’re standing on a riverside outside the village where it’s cloudy but dry, and a good place to learn for someone new to controlling paper with chakra. “Eventually you can incorporate it, but for now, this is going to take too much chakra for you to use it and fight simultaneously. In combining Itachi’s taijutsu with Deidara’s, you’ve created your own style. Now I’m going to teach you to combine that with ninjutsu.”
Sasuke’s still too young to learn Shikigami no Mai, but she can begin with the principles. Several days ago she mastered lacing origami with chakra and bending the paper to her will, though she’s yet to use it to fight. “What am I creating?” she asks.
“Hand fans,” Konan answers. Though not her most comfortable weapons, they’re a good starting point. “When combined with chakra, the paper’s stronger and sharper than metal. Your specialty now is genjutsu, which is good. Understanding this will be easier. Most shinobi, and even most kunoichi, fight by throwing their full force in their attacks. Your objective is to use your opponent’s force against them, and wait until an opening for a single killing blow. Now create your fans.”
It’s still a struggle for Sasuke to allow her chakra to do the work instead of her hands, but after a few minutes, she has two well made war fans in each hand. “The movement’s going to similar to your clan’s style,” Konan continues, creating fans of her own, “but less reliant on strength. You need to move like you’re dancing.”
“What?” Sasuke says even as she falls into the Uchiha style’s starting stance. Konan adjusts her arms and hands. “But no one’s taught me that. I don’t know how.”
“Mirror my movements,” Konan says, coming to stand across from her. “We’ll see how many times I knock you in the water before you learn. Are you ready?”
“I think?”
Though Sasuke’s knocked into the water from the first strike, she doesn’t allow it to deter her, and climbs back to the shore.
When Sasuke’s nine, she becomes an official Amegakure gennin, and an unofficial member of the Akatsuki. This is also when everyone realizes she hasn’t had formal written lessons since she was seven, and takes it upon themselves to catch her up to her age level.
For Kisame, this means teaching her about Kirigakure. “In Konoha, you have the ANBU,” he says, “but in Kiri, they have the hunter-nin. You’ve already got the shinobi community talking about you as ‘the Harbinger of Ame,’ so I wouldn’t be surprised if you end up in the Bingo Book sooner rather than later. These are the guys you have to worry about.”
In the archives he found pictures, and with her Sharingan activated, she can see them. They’re in the kitchens, sharing a bowl of edamame beans. “Why?” Sasuke says. “Is their object searching out people in the Bingo Book and killing them?”
“Not exactly,” he answers. “Usually they just search out Kiri missing-nin like me to assassinate, then the burn the body on site to immediately destroy evidence. But at unless the shinobi’s a full citizen of an allied country, anyone with a price on their head is free game. It doesn’t help that they’ve lifted the persecution of people with kekkei genkai.”
Sasuke’s hand pauses above the bowl. “Persecution?”
“Oh, yeah, if you were in Kiri at that time, you and your brother both would’ve been dead,” Kisame says, “if your mother was even alive long enough to give birth to you at all. Even I thought that shit was sick. Anyway—”
“Why?”
Her eyes have gone back to grey, and her face white. As much as he doesn’t mind terrifying the innocent on normal occasions, he likes the kid enough that he hadn’t meant to scare her. “Most places are pretty calm about it,” he says, “but people with kekkei genkai lead the front lines in war time. They win battles. Kiri’s got a long history of killing off what they think they can’t control. That’s why there’re so many missing nin. Half the Seven Swordsmen defected.”
“What made you?” she says.
“Got sick of killing under false pretenses,” he says. “Might still follow orders here, but at least they don’t cover the reasons in bullshit. Never let yourself get idealistic, kid. That’s how you end up dead or worse.”
With that, he returns to the lesson.
Sasuke doesn’t reactivate her Sharingan until long after Itachi calls her away.
With Orochimaru run off, Sasori’s confined to Amegakure for the next few weeks until partnerships are switched around. The Uchiha siblings are around, too, Itachi too sick to do anything, and little Sasuke stubbornly refusing to leave his side, so with no other entertainment, Sasori decided to teach her what she’s been asking of him for the past year. As she’s not of Suna, and too young, he’d never show her real puppet jutsu, but he it wouldn’t hurt to show her how to create chakra strings.
For some time he waits in the training room under the glowing light, but Sasuke doesn’t come. It’s odd, as rather than simply punctual, she’s normally early. His hearing was purposely built to more advanced than a normal human’s, and if something happened to Itachi, the noise of hurried activity would reach him. After ten minutes or so, Sasori feels a trickle of worry, closely followed by apprehension, and leaves to find Konan.
She’s in the dining hall, chopsticks clicking together as she gathers rice to eat in a way he still misses with pangs of jealousy on occasion. When he enters, she looks to him, and says, “Hello, Sasori. Here for another discussion on shapes?”
Though they may disagree on the purpose of their art, there’s no one else in the Akatsuki who understands creation the way she does. It’s not unusual for them to sit and discuss styles. “Later,” he answers, knowing now that his single-day pupil absence can’t be the fault of her brother. The first person she would’ve gotten was Konan. “Have you seen Sasuke anywhere?”
“I thought she was with you.”
“She never came.”
Konan’s mouth twitches, and she releases her paper butterflies into the air. “She doesn’t get confused anymore,” she says, “but I suppose there’s always the possibility.”
Not just Sasuke is gone, they find, but Itachi, too. Sasori assumed, like most of the others, that she’d join one day at the rate she improved, and finds himself sadder than the expected at the realization a scorned Orochimaru likely killed them both.
Sasuke’s awake for the eye operation she didn’t ask for. She feels every severed nerve, every jolt of pain, all the blood on her face, hyper aware of the cloth in her mouth to keep her from screaming, and the softness of the sheets beneath her back. According to Uncle Madara, Itachi asked for this, but that doesn’t make her want it any more than she would if he hadn’t. If Uncle Madara hadn’t temporarily paralyzed her, she doesn’t know what she would’ve done.
Implanting Itachi’s eyes hurts worse than having her own removed. The Sharingan is made for this, and reattachment happens on its own, but the pain is like nothing she’s ever felt before. Even with the cloth, she doesn’t understand how no one in the hotel can hear her. Tears mingle with the blood on her face, sliding from her cheeks to the pillow, and when all this through, it’s going to look like a murder occurred here.
As quickly as it began, it’s over, though the afterthought of pain remains. She jerks out of the paralysis, sitting up and gasping as Uncle Madara takes her under his arm, holding her there. “You’re going to pass out from the pain soon,” he says, and something soft and wet touches under her eye, sending another shoot of pain through her body, before he starts to clean the blood away. “Itachi told you to go back Konoha—even went far enough to implant the genjutsu in his eyes to screw with your memory. He thought I didn’t know, but hey, I know everything. It’s going to kick in once you wake up. But you don’t really want to go back, do you? Well, don’t worry, I’ll break you out of it when the time’s right.”
She squeezes her eyes—no, Itachi’s eyes—shut, and grips onto Uncle Madara’s shirt, burying her face into his chest. She’s never felt so betrayed in her life; Itachi just made her kill him, told her to go somewhere that isn’t home, and now Madara’s saying she has to do the same. The pain throbs, spreading from her head through her body, and she wants to wake up and find out this is just one of her nightmares. She’ll curl up with Itachi until she remembers he’d never really hurt her, and fall asleep like that, or if she passed out from chakra exhaustion in the middle of the day, it’ll be Konan stroking her hair, calming her down in a way her mother never did.
In Konoha, Shisui told her you can’t feel pain in dreams, but she felt the Tsukuyomi in her sleep enough times that she knows it isn’t true. Even so, she knows this is real, and she’s here in a hotel in the Fire Country with hands still stained with her brother’s blood. The pain’s so severe she can’t even plead for Uncle Madara to change his mind, and bring her back.
“Look, I know how it works there,” he continues, “so I know what they’re going to do to you. You’re going to get stuck in I and T for a while, but without any proof, you’ll get released eventually. Then you’ll get set up with a bunch of babysitters made up of jounin. Get them to like you, get yourself onto a gennin team. Itachi never gave up all the information he had, but you can fill in the blanks once you remember again. They’ll be casual around you if they trust you enough.”
Suddenly, she’s pushed back to the bed, one of his hands on her forehead and the other on her abdomen. Instinctively, she opens her eyes, and the room is hazy and dull. “You’ve got to do this without me telling you,” he says, “but if you remember, Konoha’ll catch you. Itachi’s not the only one who can plant suggestions. See you in a few years, Sasuke-chan.”
When the Sharingan in the slit in his mask shifts to the Mangekyo, she screams through the cloth, and her mind goes dark.
It’s late on a Tuesday when Deidara bursts back into the Ame hideaway after his week off. “You were right about Sasuke-chan,” he says immediately when he finds Konan alone with the morning paper in the dining hall. “Orochimaru didn’t take her. It was Konoha! And she has Itachi’s eyes!”
For the rest of the members who cared for the girl, Sasuke was something of a little sister or cousin, but it was different for Konan. She’d never had a child, and never planned to, but her affections for Sasuke were how she imagined motherhood felt. When Konan declared, quite adamantly, that Orochimaru was not responsible, it was less out of genuine disbelief, and more because she couldn’t stand the idea of something that terrible happening.
This is decidedly worse.
“Are you sure?” she says. “How do you know?”
“I literally just sort of ran into her,” he answers, shock still in his voice, though it must have several days ago. “It was actually kind of scary. There were three Konoha-nin, and then a bunch of Orochimaru’s guys, and she looks different, but not that different, so I went and killed everyone because I figured I was saving her. Then she just freaked the fuck out, and kept asking who I was even after I told her. Konan, she can see. Her eyes are blue instead of grey, and then she did that black flame thing Itachi could do. She had a Konoha symbol on. They must’ve done something to her.”
No, Konoha didn’t do anything, Konan knows. Itachi was so terribly protective, almost to the point of unreasonable in the beginning; if he was dying at a quicker rate than he said, it only makes sense he’d sent his little sister home. The question is, then, how she has his eyes.
Deidara looks to Konan for answers, as she was, after all, the closest person to Sasuke outside of her brother. “Konohagakure is currently the strongest all the hidden villages,” Konan says, thinking the situation through with more logic than she can expect Deidara to do at the moment. “It’s also home to the Kyuubi Jinchuruki. If she didn’t recognize you, she won’t recognize any of us. It’s safer for everyone if we leave her there until we move in for the Jinchuruki.”
The problem with affection is the reckless decisions it can cause. Shinobi are quicker to lose their humanity than kunoichi, but for those not lost completely, slivers of goodness are enough to act as an anchor in the darkness. Who better than a little blind girl just as willing to dispense a hug as to throw a kunai to a grown man’s throat?
She’s gone, but her influence isn’t. Deidara stalks off with his shoulders high, scowling, and Konan tries to imagine what Sasuke looks like now.
When Sasuke appears in front of Naruto in the doorway of his hotel room, ready to defend from whoever wants to hurt him, she feels time stop around her.
The blue skin and shark-like appearance of the man is familiar enough, but it’s the cloak that has her stunned, patterned black with red clouds like her dream. She relaxes her stance, lets the Sharingan fade, and when she meets his eyes, an expression similar to surprise flits across his face. “So he was right,” he says, grabbing her chin, leaving Naruto forgotten. “These are really Itachi’s. How’s it feel being able to see?”
“Hey, Sasuke,” Naruto says from behind her, “what’s going on, and who is this guy?”
“No idea,” she answers, “but clearly someone who knew my brother. What do you want?”
There’s a name caught in her mouth that she can’t quite get, but she pushes the curiosity away, because Naruto is more important. After Kaito-sensei, Kichiro, and Yuki, she can’t lose anyone else. Rather than answer, though, the man squints at some point beyond her, then grabs her hair and shoulder, spinning her around, and pulling down her shirt. “So Itachi did it to protect you from him,” he says, more to himself, and she catches sight of Naruto’s face, eyebrows drawn in and nose scrunched. Louder, the man says, “I’m here to get both of you. Convenient that you’re in the same place. Some help here, Sasuke-chan?”
She thinks of Kichiro calling her that, arm thrown around her shoulders, and when she reactivates the Sharingan, she has just enough time to twist around, intercepting the man’s attempt to attack Naruto. Then the stray thought comes in her in the man’s voice—she’s too good to be fighting with a couple of fans, Konan.
Midway through the attack, her Chidori fizzles out and she falls to her hands and knees, dizzy from her mind trying to connect the thought to a situation, and the name to a face. When all of Naruto’s clones disappear, though, she forces herself to her feet again, and throws herself between them as they try to attack each other. If the man’s sword connected, Naruto would be dead worse, but she isn’t sure which one she’s protecting all the same.
Years of experience means the man was able to stop his swing before the odd blade could come down into her back. Naruto, though, doesn’t have that kind of skill, and the useless kunai he so prepared to against a sword with is stabbed into her stomach.
He lets go, horrified, and the man grabs the back of her shirt.
That’s when Jiraiya appears, turning the hallway slick and living, and Sasuke doesn’t feel saved.
After Obito saves his little cousin from dying at the hands of five kidnappers not intelligent enough to stop and heal her, he reverses the genjutsu on her right there in the clearing. She passes out from the mental and physical strain, having released Amaterasu as an instinctive reaction, and he brings her a safe distance away before setting her down in the grass and waiting for her to wake.
The day is cloudless and quiet save the normal sounds of the forest, and the streamside a good place for a conversation. He’s checked up on her over the years, but this is the first time seeing her close enough to inspect. As expected, she’s grown, and developed a shorter, and slimmer figure than her mother had. Her hair’s not as messy, considerably longer, and her face lost the little baby fat it had. As a child, she resembled his side of the family, which came from her grandfather’s brother, but now she’s all Itachi, just with paler skin.
At midnight, she finally opens her eyes, and with the moon full, it’s nearly bright as day. When she sits up, she winces, hand going to her bandaged side, and breathes out slowly. “I stitched you up to stop the bleeding, but you can get it fixed later,” he says, causing her to jump, and look up. “Miss me?”
She lunges forward without answering, arms circling his neck. “How the hell was I supposed to miss you when I couldn’t remember you?” she says, body shaking. “Don’t send me back. Please don’t send me back.”
Even if he wanted to, he doesn’t know if her mind can handle any more genjutsu to that severity. Animal eyes glow at them through the bushes, catching the moonlight, and he picks her up, knowing they’ve been here too long already. “There’re some facts we’re going to need to go over before we reach Ame,” he tells her, “but I promised I’d come back for you, didn’t I? You’re going home.”
Her smile holds all the sweetness it did when she was a kid, and Obito reminds himself that plans are often susceptible to change.