Work Text:
It goes like this:
There’s a little girl in town with blank grey eyes and a scared smiling saying, “Please, please, I just need with,” and the help is adjusted for the occasion. She’s as pale as ice with hair like straw blackened, straw that’s gone soft. When she smiles relieved, you’re enchanted. You’re willing to take the hand of a small little girl in yours, and lead her away.
She needs help, and you provide. Your death comes at the cost of good intentions.
Only the lucky ones survive. The rest leave the world with the feeling of steel in their hearts, and the sense of disquiet belated. This little straw doll of a child has sightings across every country. You know you’re going to die when those blind, blank eyes shine red. After she’s through with you, the sky opens itself up for rain, they say.
They call her the Harbinger of Amegakure. They say she was a little girl in the village that died herself. They say be careful whose hand you take.
Still, people follow. The stories stay long after she’s gone.
In a bar in the Water Country three years after the last true sighting of the Harbinger of Amegakure, a man called Akira sits drinking sake in a booth with his friend. “I’m telling you,” he’s saying. “She fit the description. Black hair, red eyes, pale. She was older, sure, but it was definitely her, and she was definitely human.”
His former teammate back when they were gennin frowns. “No way,” the former teammate, a jounin by the name of Hanae who frowns too much and wears her brown hair in a braid over her shoulder, says. “Legend’s too expansive. A human can’t go anonymous for that long without someone figuring it out.”
“She had a forehead protector. Amegakure.” Hanae raises an eyebrow in a single judgemental arch reminding Akira that those three straight lies don’t quite disprove the story. Her hair is the same color as the wooden booth, dark as oak bark. “The girl was as real as you or me. When she touched me, she was warm.”
There was a missing-nin when the rumors were at their peak insisting that the Harbinger was human, that the little girl taken from Amegakure with the returning bounty on her head was the same from the legend. For the same reason Hanae gives now, Akira laughed with the others in the bar when he heard, not believing the word of a traitor he once fought with side by side. Then the news came that Zabuza died at the hands of Sharingan Kakashi and a team of gennin, and the only thing anyone thought about in any relation to him was how ridiculous it was that he was killed by a few recent graduates. Finally, Akira thinks he should’ve listened. That kunoichi he fought was young. She was powerful. She could’ve killed him at any time, but left him alive in the water with a smile sincere as a bride’s instead.
As Hanae sips her drink, she says, “I’m not doubting you fought someone. It’s just that there has to be more than one black haired kid out there, right?”
“It was her,” Akira says. “If you’d seen her eyes, you would’ve believed me. She looked like some sort of spirit. The clothes didn’t help.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know how to describe it,” he says. “It wasn’t a cloak, but it wasn’t a jacket, either. It was black with red clouds.”
Hanae spills her drink on the table as her face pales, ignoring the sake that sinks in the cracks in the wood and rush down to the grey tile floor. “Black with red clouds?” she repeats, and confused, he nods. “Akira, that’s the Akatsuki. How the fuck are you still alive?”
By some measure of luck, he doesn’t drop his own glass as everything falls into place. He just encountered a living legend, a member of the Akatsuki, and he’s still here to talk about it. Though he considers himself skilled enough, he knows he shouldn’t be skilled enough to do that.
Now the only question is why the girl decided he was worth keeping alive.
A month passes, and the most recent update of the Bingo Book’s released. Uchiha Sasuke’s gained a name, and Harbinger of Amegakure’s changed to Harbinger of the Akatsuki.
Without being told, Akira knows he was only kept alive to spread the word she’s real.
Though the villagers who live in the shadow of Mugen no Yama never realize it, the avalanche was caused by the disappearance of the Isobu. For years, Shimogakure had been keeping close watch on it, content to leave the thing alone so long as it stayed in place, but they hadn’t predicted this.
“She did it,” a civilian shop owner says to Nanami when she and her genin team come to investigate. The shop sits in the valley, and the snow is piled to the windowsill, making the dim light seem dimmer. “Yuki-onna. She bought a pinwheel from me, and it didn’t even occur to me it was her.”
Nanami, like most of her fellow Shimo-nin, is superstitious, and the same can be said for her team; nervous, the skuttle closer together, sandals squeaking against the pine floor that still smells freshly cut. “You’re sure?”
“Ask anyone here,” the man says. “They’ll tell you the same thing. There aren’t many people outside of your village that don’t leave footprints in the snow, and no offense, but she looked way too comfortable in that kimono to be one of yours.”
Though Ruka, the only girl of Team Three, is insulted, Nanami allows the comment to harmlessly roll off her. It’s true that kunoichi don’t know the intricacies of festival wear the way civilians do, with the exception of maybe major clan women from the larger villages who view their women as shogi pieces. “Thank you for your time,” she says, and turns to her team. “Come on, guys, we have a mountain to check out.”
It’s a long walk up the snowy, ruined trail, and by the time they reach the summit and the storm, the sun’s going down. Squinting, Nanami shines her flashlight around, looking for signs that the culprit could be anything other than a spirit, and repeated wipes snow off the lens. Half an hour into the search, Kosei calls, “I think I found something, Nana-sensei!”
He’s only a blurred shape and glowing beam in the storm, but she finds him easily enough, shining her own flashlight in the direction of his so they join together to cut through the snowfall. “What in the world?” she says, more to herself than to her kids, and when Ruka and Haru join them, she crouches down at level of the blackened marks across the exposed rocks.
“What is it, Nana-sensei?” Haru asks. In the violent wind, his voice is as thin as a trout’s rib bone.
She uses her gloved hand to wipe away more snow, revealing the extent of the damage. Whole portions of the rocks are missing, as though they were made of wood, easy to send up in flames. “These are scorch marks,” she says, just loud enough to be heard. “Bad ones, too. There’s a cave in down there that I don’t think is supposed to be here, either. It shouldn’t be possible to light a fire in this weather, even with ninjutsu.”
“So it really was a spirit?” he says, light bouncing across the cliff face. “But Yuki-onna freezes things.”
“Yeah, she does,” she answers, and kneels down further, reaching for a patch of light blue just visible below a pile of toppled snow. When she tugs, fabric rips, and then she’s holding a thick strip of silk decorated with pale white sakura petals. “This is a little too real to be any kind of spirit. Someone made a fire to burn snow and rock.”
Ruka, more anxious than her teammates, says, “What can do that?”
Something prods at the back of Nanami’s mind, a comment she heard once in passing, and she swears, standing. Her students move away, startled, and Kosei drops his flashlight. “We need to go back to the village,” she says, picking it up for him and handing it back. “I think I know who it is.”
Not long ago, Nanami heard a story about the Harbinger of the Akatsuki creating flames that burned fire to rotten air. Anything strong enough to burn fire can burn in a storm like this, she thinks, and leads her students away, worry settling as a stone in her chest.
Utakata was never particularly discrete for a missing-nin, so after he goes silent for two months, Kiri sends a few jounin to search for the reason behind his absence. Caring about the whereabouts of a traitor is normally a low priority unless the goal is the kill him, but Utakata was declared too dangerous to face years ago. If news of the Isobu’s kidnapping hadn’t spread throughout the countries not long ago, his silence might be reason not for suspicion, but relief. Instead, the general feeling in Kirigakure is one of unspoken anxiety, creating another mist laced through the physical one.
As Taru’s the only hunter-nin available, the Mizukage sends him alone to track Kiri’s most notorious missing-nin. He begins in the eastern Fire Country where Utakata was last spotted by a Konoha-nin, and follows rumors and civilian descriptions down to a bar that stinks of alcohol and fruit in the Wave Country. The place quiets when Taru enters, eyes turning quick to his mask before turning just as quickly away, conversation resuming with a falsely casual chatter. A couple years ago, an imposter wearing the hunter-nin uniform attacked a nearby village, if he remembers correctly. That understandably left a scar thick on public conscience.
He pulls out his Bingo Book as he approaches the counter where the bartender watches him with wary eyes, scrubbing at the same glass long after it’s clean. “I’m not here for trouble,” Taru says, and the man doesn’t relax. “I’m just looking for someone who’s gone missing. Have you seen this man?”
The man’s gaze flits from the mask to the open page as he finally puts down the glass and rag. “Yeah, I think so,” he says. The rows of bottles behind him are unlabeled, and half cast in shadow. “He was with that girl.”
When Taru was sent on this mission, he was, of course, given the possible reason behind Utakata’s disappearance. The people of the Frost Country call the Harbinger of the Akatsuki Yuki-onna now. They say she went up the mountain with a boy whose description fits that of Deidara of Iwagakure. They say they went up, and the mountain exploded. They say they never came back down, but when they checked, the Isobu was gone.
The Harbinger, Yuki-onna, the Konoha-nin—she’s a child. Taru himself is only nineteen, graduating to genin at nine, becoming a chuunin at eleven, a jounin by fourteen, and a hunter-nin just a year later. Realistically, she’s not much different. But even at nineteen, as a captain, one of the best hunter-nin Kiri can offer, Taru knows he couldn’t capture one Tailed-Beast, let alone two. They’re demons, and it would take another demon to steal one away.
He flips five pages open, and holds out the book again, paper glaring in the yellow light. “I know there’s not a picture,” he says, “but did she fit this description?”
“I don’t need some description, shinobi-san,” the man answers, not looking down. “I recognized her. A couple years ago when that whole bridge debacle was going down, I was in the village over visiting my brother-in-law. Just didn’t want to say anything because I never got her name.”
“It’s Sasuke,” Taru says, heartbeat quickening. “Uchiha Sasuke. Any idea where they went from here?”
Shaking his head, the man says, “He just paid for their food and they left. Half expected them to ask for a room with the way she was giggling. She came back a day later alone, though. Looked dead tired, just asked for something to drink. Water. Kid’s too young to drink in these parts. I remember ‘cause I thought it was weird, what with how close they were acting and all. Anything else? Because you’re scaring the customers.”
Though it’s rare for a civilian to be this blunt, Taru can’t complain. It gives him a reason to leave. “If either of them come back,” he says, though he knows they won’t, “send word to Kirigakure.”
Eyes follow him as he leaves, as though waiting for him to turn and kill them all. His mother was a civilian, and it’s a fear he recognizes. Loyal shinobi don’t bother with the everyman; it’s missing-nin who see the fun in slaughter.
Just two months ago, they had Utakata the Saiken Jinchuruki in this bar and all lived. Uchiha Sasuke might have no qualms about using herself as a distraction, it seems, but she still might’ve saved an establishment from needless destruction. Taru can respect that, at least.
In the Bingo Book Ryu-sensei has, it says gennin and chuunin should flee on sight if they encounter Sasuke of the Akatsuki, but Yuto doesn’t see a way to run without drawing her attention. Instead he stays huddled in the mangrove trees, terrified, as he watches his sensei and a girl barely older than he is fight across the lake’s beach while Sen clings to his hand and Haruki digs the fingers of his right in the sand. Two on his left were broken in the fall into the grove.
As someone who grew up his whole life with a shinobi family, Yuto knows lightning and lightning-based attacks, but the Sasuke girl moves like no one he’s ever seen. She’s a cat, or a fox, or maybe a dancer, and he's never thought of gracefulness as deadly before. “We have to help,” Sen starts to say, but Haruki puts his bad hand over her mouth, and all Yuto can think is that he doesn’t want to die.
Ryu-sensei releases a whole volley of his undodgeable, mostly invisible wind kunai, but the Sasuke girl bursts into what looks like sheets of paper, avoiding all of them. The paper swirls in an arch above sensei’s head, and reforms behind him, back into herself as if she hadn’t separated into a hundred separate pieces. As he turns turns, she extends her hand, blue lightning cracking down her arm and shooting out like a real bolt from a storm out of her fingers. Sensei evades, too good to be caught by something like that, but Yuto loses hope that this is going to work out when she avoids several solid kunai and shuriken by crouching, kicking out, and extends lightning from her foot.
It connects directly with sensei’s stomach.
Sen runs out, long red curls too bright in the sunlight, and, not wanting to leave her, Yuto and Haruki follow. “No, run,” Ryu-sensei says, clutching his stomach, and pursues the missing-nin when she heads out onto the lake.
None of them can walk on water yet, which means they’re stuck waiting and watching, exposed with nowhere to hide. The missing-nin says something Yuto can’t hear, voice stolen by distance and the wind, as she tucks her arms behind her, and rocks on her heels the way Chiyo, the girl he's liked for the past three years, does. Somehow, Haruki must hear, because he suddenly grabs Yuto and Sen by the arms, wincing, and pulls them back, off to dry sand.
Then the lake explodes with a sudden electrical current from the missing-nin’s entire body. Ryu-sensei screams, more pained than Yuto thought possible for someone as good as he is, and sinks into the water, heavy from his jacket and weapons.
“I wouldn’t go to try and retrieve the body yet,” says a voice behind them. Yuto jumps, and turns with his friends, finding the missing-nin standing there, except she isn’t a missing-nin at all. There’s no scratch through her forehead protector, which he now recognizes as the symbol from Amegakure. He hadn’t known Iwa and Ame had any issues with each other. “The water’s still sparking. Now go back home and tell the Tsukikage to stop bothering me.”
“You killed Ryu-sensei,” Haruki says. “You—I’m going to—”
Her eyes flash red just like the stories, just like the fight, and then Yuto and Sen have their hands full of their unconscious friend. “I don’t believe in hurting kids,” the girl says, as if she isn’t only a few years older than them at most. “I’m sorry about your sensei. Go home.”
With that, she’s gone, disappearing into nothing, and he doesn’t think he’s ever been so frightened in his life.
Iwa’s Team Ryu, down its namesake, return home to tell their stories. In answer, the Tsukikage increases the Harbinger bounty by five million, commending and condemning all at once.
There was once a girl from Konoha whose brother killed their family in a single night, and took her somewhere far away, the story goes. Maybe she died and her soul was left behind, corrupted by a drive for revenge, or maybe she lost her mind somewhere down the line. In Iwa and Kiri, they say she has the eyes of a demon. In Kumo, they say she was born unnatural and has lightning in her blood. In Konoha, they only wonder where they went wrong.
Stories circulate because she’s young, and she’s pretty, and wary enough about hurting children that she leaves survivors. That might be the cruelest act she does, because as she should know from experience, nothing hurts quite like the pain of being the one left behind.
There aren’t rumors in Amegakure, but speculations about the future, because Uchiha Sasuke speaks openly and personally with enough people that there’s little point in listening to the gossip of the outside world.
“What, Sasuke?” Noa, an Ame gennin and someone friendly with the object of the conversation, says to the green haired Taki-nin who tries to question her about the Harbinger at this year’s chuunin exam. “Look, don’t get me wrong, she’s really good, but she’s like, fifteen. A puppy’s scarier than she is.”
In Ame, they call Sasuke The Lady Angel’s Angel, because the flower she wears in her hair alone is proof of how close they are. As treasonous as Noa feels thinking this, Lord Pein and the Lady Angel are going to die or abdicate power one day, and likely the majority vote for the next leader will go to Sasuke. She’s strong and clever, and kind in a sarcastic sort of way. That’s why the rumors that make her out to be some murderous rogue kunoichi are so ridiculous.
Unfortunately, the rumor’s widespread and widely accepted, and the Taki-nin frowns, creasing three lines between her forehead like the symbol of Ame. “You know she’s killed like a whole bunch of people, right?”
Shrugging, Noa says, “We’re shinobi. Isn’t that part of the job description?”
Like most gennin, she’s never killed before, but she’s prepared to. Now that she’s about to be a chuunin, it’s going to happen sooner rather than later, and she won’t be afraid. “If you say so,” the Taki-nin says, still frowning. “I don’t know how much I believe the puppy thing, though.”
Noa rolls her eyes, but lets the conversation drop, because there’s no point in explaining the girl half the shinobi world is so terrified of can’t reach the top shelves at the marketplace without asking for help.
In the River Country, Jiraiya overhears a discussion he wishes he hadn’t.
“Her left eye’s all purplish grey,” a Tani-nin saying through the sushi he’s still chewing, flecks of blood caught under his fingernails lighter than dirt. “Darker grey circles in it. A few. And no white anymore, right? That’s how Koki said Sora said his student described it as.”
The Tani-nin has onlookers, and Jiraiya unwillingly becomes one of them, because he recognizes the description. He only saw it once on the face of a boy who should be dead, burned or buried or left for the ravens. “Hey,” he says, drawing the attention of the Tani-nin, the other Tani-nin, and the civilian chef behind the counter who’s cutting seaweed into strips with his short black hair kept back in a net. His green eyes are wet from chopping onions. “Who’re you talking about?”
Looks are exchanged before a second Tani-nin, a woman, says, “Did you just walk into this one?” Jiraiya nods. The woman pushes her bangs off her face, strands caught in a cut in her upper lip. “The Harbinger of the Akatsuki, Yuki-onna, Uchiha Sasuke, take your pick. That girl.”
“Ever feel like every time we turn around, we hear something new about her?” a second woman says, downing a glass of sake. “Another, please. I’m assuming you know who she is.”
Naruto’s been back in Konoha a month, and Jiraiya is suddenly so thankful the boy isn’t here. “Yeah,” he says, thinking of the little girl at the chuunin exams, zipping around the area using a mix between Kakashi and Konan’s techniques, confident as a jounin even as a gennin. Now she has the Rinnegan. “It’s hard not to.”
Though he sheltered Naruto from some of the stories circulating to the best of his ability, Jiraiya still heard them. If even half those rumors are true, Konoha should’ve held her down and slit her throat when she was too young to fight back.
“The last time she was spotted,” the first Tani-nin says, “she had a different partner. Wonder if the blue guy’s dead. New one’s blonde with an Iwa symbol, if that means anything to you.”
It does. Her old partner was Kisame of Kirigakure, the same man who almost killed her and Naruto in the inn almost three years ago. Since then, Jiraiya’s studied the Akatsuki, and the only one from Iwa that he knows of is a boy named Deidara. To willingly pair an earth user and a lightning user together, the currently unknown leader must trust their teamwork capabilities. That makes them more dangerous, considering who they’re after.
Even if it were to traumatize Naruto for life, Jiraiya would rather stab her through the back now than give her the chance to kill her old teammate when she’s taken care of the rest of the Jinchuruki. He’s a legendary sannin, and he can take a little girl, at least. “Her eye’s a kekkei genkai,” he says after a moment, putting his pay down on the counter, “and can do a lot worse than electrocute you. If you see the two of them, run.”
When no one argues, he thinks they all must’ve been planning to do so already. Sometimes even the sake of pride isn’t enough for a person to risk something like that.
The people of Ame know Uchiha Sasuke would never willingly betray the village, even for the one she born in. They say she walked into Konoha’s borders to stop Lord Pein’s attack, but everyone knows that can’t be true, because she was next in line for the village head, whether officially or not, and this is just another case of a major village stealing what isn’t theirs.
In the next update of the Bingo Book, her bounty is still there, but her status as international criminal removed. The rain over the village seems colder that day, and Takashi sits in a crowded sushi bar with his sister and their teammate, listening to rain hit against the window, vicious with the village’s anger. It’s different here now, with their leader dead, and his successor disappeared into the folds of Konoha. All they have is the Lady Angel, with her stern face and grace, but he feels as though it won’t be long until she’s gone, too, and then his home will again rise to the mess it was when he was too young to remember. Sasuke, the Harbinger, may have been a foreigner with hair too black and her consonants too hard, but there weren’t many in Ame who didn’t consider one of them.
Around them, the atmosphere of the bar is more somber than usual, and Amegakure is already far from a happy place. Ai, Takashi’s sister, pushes her seaweed salad around in her dish, corner of her mouth turned down. He glances around, locking eyes accidentally with his old Academy instructor who put him through the gennin exam at twelve, and where he met Sasuke years ago, though he always doubted the girl recognized the sound of his voice after they met again. They nod to each other one, movement slight for both, and Takashi turns back to Ai and Heiwa, who sit leaning against the white brick walls.
Life goes on, and the major villages keeping taking from the lesser ones. However they managed to steal her back, their loss of Sasuke is just one in a line of many.
That’s what hurts more than anything else.
When Uchiha Sasuke returns to the streets of Konoha as villain and savior, it’s with a flurry of stories and conflicting theories.
She was willing, not a hostage, some say, and others insist, But she came back.
Little about her time in Amegakure is known, other than who she killed and who she worked for. Nara Shikamaru summaries his opinion on the matter, and the general opinion on the matter, plainly enough when he says, “Well, the Godaime trusts her.”
Out in the village center, she engages and converses, and stays tucked snuggly into the sides of trusted teammates. She doesn’t look much like a little girl anymore; she’s small for her age, rather than tall as she used to be, with a woman’s body, and a sharp face kept half hidden by her hair. Her smiles come infrequent, but with quiet sincerity, and it’s not long before village opinion has turned in her favor.
Somehow, she never quite shakes her title as the Harbinger of the Akatsuki. It hangs heavy at her back, a spirit of accountability ready to break her spine, and people are, largely, considerate enough not to comment.
Natsuki of Amegakure has been a gennin for two months, and is saved from death by a woman in a white mask painted with the image of a hawk. Behind her, the enemy-nin that attached Natsuki’s team lie dead in the tall grass of the plains of the Waterfall Country, still smoking from lightning strikes extended without hand seals. The air’s thick with the metallic smell of thunderstorms, or snow, and charged with fear settled deeper into her than the stab wound from the Tani-nin’s thin kunai.
Though Natsuki never met the Lady Angel’s Angel, she knows her from stories, and even sluggish from blood loss and muddled emotion, the masked figure grows an identity. “Hold this in place, kid,” Uchiha Sasuke says, though all the stories call her young, so their ages can’t be terribly far apart. She presses a strip of gauze against Natsuki’s shoulder, where she already cut away part of the shirt and jacket. The rest of Team Six are already unconscious, if not dead. “Press hard.”
“Why are you helping?” she asks, even as she follows instructions, and winces at the pain, movement catching her brown hair between her eyelashes. “You’re from Konoha.”
People say Konoha stole the Lady Angel’s Angel away during an invasion. People like to say they forced her to defect. As she starts wrapping the wound, Natsuki decides she’s too dizzy to form an opinion of her own.
Around them, the grass sways, hindering and tall. The mask is the color of bleached bone.
Then the mask is off, slid instead to rest at the side of the other girl’s head, and she says, “Recognize me? You should recognize me. I’m not going to hurt you.”
She’s beautiful, exactly as Natsuki’s older peers describe—her hair like raven wings falling across her shoulders, with one eye pale purple and the other a bright red, and her face like a geisha doll. Like Yuki-onna, Natsuki thinks, head swimming as she remembers her older brother’s Bingo Book knocked open on their living area floor. Only a year ago, people said Uchiha Sasuke would be Lord Pein’s successor, but there’s a mask on the side of her head decorated with the face of a hawk, and her body encased in armor just as white. Every Ame-nin knows the uniform of a Konoha ANBU, and whatever they forced her through must not have been strong enough if she’s still willing to interrupt her own mission to save a gennin team from an enemy village.
When she smiles, it’s sweet, and unafraid. “Hey, you’re not that far from Ame, okay, kid?” she says. “And I’m not that big, so I can’t do a whole lot for your team. If I get you back now, think you can remember where this place is enough to tell a rescue party where they can find them?”
“Yeah,” Natsuki says. “Sure.”
The Lady Angel’s Angel pulls her into her arms before Natsuki knows to scream from the pain. Leaving her team behind puts a worse taste in her mouth than the blood beginning to pool in her throat, but Uchiha Sasuke has the looks of a snow spirit meant to melt in the heat of this summer day, and still remains solid under the grip of Natsuki’s smaller body. “I need you to not be scared,” the other girl says, and then the summer day is fading, giving way to somewhere dim and cool that leaves Natsuki’s skin prickling with fear.
Within three days, the story of the Lady Angel’s Angel saving a stray gennin team spreads through Amegakure.
Alone in the tower of the village head, Konan smiles in quiet pride. Three weeks afterward, Uchiha Madara murders her, and Amegakure falls to chaos without someone there to keep it safe.
In Kumo, they have no love for the Harbinger of the Akatsuki, but hold to true animosity towards her, either. If she was unable to capture B, the thought process goes, then some of her reputation must be exaggerated.
Then comes the Kages Summit.
The Raikage and his guards return with the story of a girl and a man in a mask who aren’t restricted by the boundaries of floors or walls. They say she conjured flames blacker than the night from her bloody eyes, and created lightning from the smoke and the stars. They say the man in the mask was her family, and he could remove his body in and out of reality so quickly no attack could touch him. This is the Uchiha family, they say, and the old stories must be true, because no one but a spirit can cross out of this world.
If you see them, they say, damn your pride, and run.
Root lies in shambles, half Konoha’s chuunin and jounin are dead or injured severely, and Danzo’s deception finally comes to light.
“See, I knew I was right not to trust that kidnapping story,” Jiraiya says to Kakashi in the privacy of his apartment as outside these walls, the remaining village has their own versions of the same discussions. “But, fuck—no wonder they ran away.”
A small vase of days old flowers sits on the coffee table, white and red and yellow and meaningless to him. During the past two years, she’s settled herself into his life so completely, so unapologetically, and kept this to herself for almost a decade. She should have told him, should have trusted him. It hurts sometimes, the realization of how readily he accepts what she says, as if she never left Konoha twice, for an understandable reason or not.
Now everyone is talking about it as ordinary gossip. He would’ve listened.
Running his hand through his hair, still damp from a shower hours earlier, he says, “We fucked up. This generation was supposed to be better than us. It’s just as messed up as mine was.”
Though Kakashi’s generation like to tell themselves they’re better than the ones before them, too, that they’ve protected this newest one, they failed the moment Minato and Kushina died, and they allowed Naruto to grow up alone. In the Hyuuga family, Hinata grew up in fear of her cousin for years, quivering behind her father and later her team, and no one did a thing to stop it. Naruto and Sakura’s graduating class, and the few around it, had the highest kunoichi dropout rate seen in fifty years. Seven ANBU members submitted concerned reports about Uchiha Itachi’s behavior, and never thought twice when every one of them was ignored.
Because they ignored the signs, a boy barely into his teens, and a blind little girl, were raised by an organization of criminals with the power to destroy the shinobi world. Kakashi had known Danzo blackmailed her when she first returned, but he hadn’t known the reasoning would be this. Maybe they can make it up Sasuke now, as she deserves, but there’s nothing anyone can do for Itachi, who died at the hands of his sister, alone and vilified.
“They still grew up a good group of kids,” Jiraiya says, but Kakashi hasn’t thought of Sasuke as a child since the day he saw her under the lantern light of the Spirit Festival, snow in her hair with Deidara of Iwagakure’s hand resting like a lover’s on her back. “I’m not saying that makes this right, but it means this could’ve been worse.”
Kakashi looks at the flowers on his table, and wonders if the rest of Konoha are telling themselves the same thing. “She said Obito had his mind twisted by someone into believing the only way to get a peaceful world was to destroy it,” he says, and still struggles to understand how the Obito Sasuke talks about is the same one he grew up side by side with. The light casts the vase’s shadow long across the table and floor, and up the wall, brushing against Jiraiya’s arm. “Our worse would’ve been if he managed to convince her to believe that, too.”
At the age of seventeen, Sasuke already has a legacy of awestruck rumors and horror stories that put her brother’s to shame. Jiraiya drums his fingers against the table and says, “You’re not going to hear me say this again, so just listen. I trained those two that attacked our village during the war, you know that, and something went wrong like it did with that old teammate of yours, but I always thought Konan would make a damn good mom if she and Yahiko ever grew old enough to have a baby or two. Konoha might’ve fucked up, but Sasuke was raised with a pretty solid moral compass anyway. It could’ve been worse.”
Once, in the Lightning Country, during a mission with Gai and Kurenai, Kakashi heard a story about a girl they called the Harbinger, who had lightning for blood and could capture the mind of the most skilled shinobi with a single glance. She had many opportunities to turn on Danzo, but hadn’t, and Konoha should have learned the truth without the intervention of Root’s near destruction. Obito did this, and helped lead to the deaths of Minato and Kushina and place Naruto into a position he never deserved, and did much worse to his own cousin, all in Rin’s name.
It could’ve been worse. It should’ve been better. The Uchiha family were owed respect and recognition, and now years later, Sasuke’s stories are more about a spirit than a living, human young woman. And there’s nothing Kakashi can do to change this.
The Harbinger of the Akatsuki kills The Masked Man at seventeen, and her legend explodes. “Kin Killer,” shinobi across the world say, and, “Like her brother. She killed him, too.”
Some say, “Ame tore out her emotions,” while others insist, “No, Konoha must have destroyed her mind for treason.”
Uchiha Obito, the Masked Man, was a rogue shinobi who claimed he would bring peace by capturing everyone in an illusion. He was an opponent impossible to touch. He was a man who the Kages and guards who attended the Summit said couldn’t be killed, and their word was taken as law. Now he’s dead, untouchable but still stabbed through the chest with lightning that sung sweet like a robin in spring by a girl he called cousin.
“You’ll meet her on the side of the road, in the middle of town, or in the middle of nowhere,” they say. “She’ll smile and take your hand and lead you far, far from away.” They say, “Her eyes are raven eyes. You’ll know you’re going to die when they turn red.”
They say she’s a cold silk-skinned ningyo doll with lightning in her blood, and she won’t show you mercy even if you beg.