Work Text:
Place: Uchiha district, main family house.
Date: the day of the Uchiha massacre, 2:13 a.m.
-*-
A strong smell of cigarettes must have penetrated every corner of the backyard by now. Those remaining smokes, short and pathetic, filled an old ashtray one by one over the past hours. Two belonged to a beautiful woman that he had an honor to call his wife. The remaining… many… to him.
Uchiha Fugaku.
To the excuse of a man. The most prominent failure in the Uchiha Clan leaders history.
…was he? He sacrificed the lasts eight years to the clan, doing whatever he could to improve its reputation. He negotiated with the Hokage, looking for ways to rebuild the village’s trust towards the Uchiha after the tragic Kyuubi attack. He was balancing diplomatic gains and losses if only to hope for benefits in the long run. He pushed his own personal limits, ignored his personal non-negotiables to win something, anything for his Clan, because he was their leader and they were his responsibility.
And what was all that for…?
One-third of the Uchiha pushed for something that would result in their extinction. He should have silenced them then and there, shut their mouth with hard logic, uncaring for their anger and pride. He should have held his ground because these hasty, impatient fools could one day ruin them all…
What had possessed him to let them?
His father has warned him the moment he handed him the power that there were Uchiha who had never stopped dreaming about dominance and craved, even if unconsciously, the same outcome for the clan as their ancestors in the warring clan era. And he knew that himself, too, so why had he ever played along.
He never wanted any military confrontation with the village. It was stupid, it was just wrong on every possible level to turn against their own people, their friends that they grew up with. But he knew that his clansmen would never listen to his no – a no would only lead to an internal tragedy, a fight for power within the clan. Fugaku was not a power seeker and for many reasons, he would be happy to hand away his function of a clanhead, but passing it on to someone crazy was out of question. Had he said no to their demand of rebellion against the Hokage, those idiots would start a war without his blessing, destroying the clan on their way for something they called justice.
So he gave them a yes, if only to gain time and plan how to temper their ridiculous ambitions because he wished for the Uchiha to be respected by the village, but not to be feared, and in no way was a war the right answer for lack of respect.
It took him only a few months to realize that there was no way to change their mind and that he, Uchiha Fugaku, had made a tragic mistake. Those idiots would not ruin only themselves now, but their whole clan. What he thought was a way to protect the rest of the clan and the village, has now turned into a death sentence for every single Uchiha.
The execution was scheduled for today evening and was supposed to be carried out by his thirteen-years-old son.
And this tragedy was now their best option which only added to his grief because how could an eradication of almost four hundred people be their best option.
Well, it was, he realized for the millionth time this night, exhaling cigarette smoke through his nose. Nothing more could be done about it. It was a fact.
Mikoto somehow managed to fall asleep nonetheless. Itachi was sleeping too and Fukagu did not want to know what the boy did to be able to drift off at all.
…the clan’s tragedy was one thing, but destroying Itachi… was another. And for this, Fugaku could not blame any stupid clansmen. He could only blame himself.
His son was about to carry out the order that would break him forever. Not only did Fugaku let that happen, but he enabled it when he understood that there was no way to stop his clansmen. He had pushed his own son and tomorrow he would let Itachi…slit his throat.
His failure as the clanhead was nothing compared to his failure as a father.
…
There was something wrong with this world, in which fathers were forced to choose strangers over their own children. But he would choose the whole population of Konoha, every family, every other child but his own, over his precious son.
Tomorrow.
And for that, he was ready to burn in hell for eternity.
Dropping the cigarette to the ashtray, he stood up from the porch and marched into the house with quiet steps. He soundlessly climbed the stairs to the second floor, wiping his face with one hand. He looked up on reflex when Itachi’s chakra signature pulsed softly from the boy’s room. Fugaku was no sensor, but he could recognize it anywhere. He slowly approached the door and slid it quietly to the left to be able to peek through the narrow chink.
His son slept on his futon curled into a ball, with his back to the door. Even though he was quite tall for a thirteen-years-old, there was no way to mistake him for an adult. But that’s how he was treated by everybody around. By the Uchiha. By the Hokage and by the Council. By… Fugaku. Recently.
But Itachi was just a boy.
Fugaku turned on his sharingan and imprinted the image of his sleeping boy in his memory. It would stay there for another day. He could remember it for the rest of the short time that he had left. Recall it at will… to calm himself, to soothe his racing mind for the remaining twenty hours of his life.
His heart missed a bit when he suddenly remembered Shisui, out of nowhere. A happy eighteen-years-old boy who recently passed away, supposedly killed… by Itachi. But Fugaku knew this was not what had happened. Itachi would never to this. Both boys were spies to the village and worked together to avoid both the coup and the eradication of the Uchiha. They… failed.
Fugaku had an idea why Shisui was dead. It was necessary… in a way, going with this logic. Understanding this logic did not help him, however, avoid a few sleepless nights after the boy’s body was found. The body of a child who he watched grow up, succeed, become a prodigy… A child who became a big brother to his son and Fugaku would never have it any other way. A boy who him and Mikoto thought about as of a son, even when he disappeared from their house after the conflict that started between him and Fugaku.
Part of Fugaku’s heart died on that day three weeks ago, along with Uchiha Shisui.
Shisui was gone. The memory of his death probably only added to all Itachi’s traumas, but what was one more, really…? Nothing. It felt almost irrelevant considering what was planned for the evening.
Fugaku slid the door shut and quietly marched towards the main bedroom…-
A tiny, weak wave of another chakra signature reached him and made him stop mid-step.
Sasuke.
He stood there, frozen in a strange half-twisted position, looking at the closed door to his little son’s room.
He blinked. He swallowed, he… exhaled.
Slowly, he opened the door soundlessly and stopped at the threshold. He took in the room, a pretty tidy room of a child. The school bag lay sprawled over the floor next to the low desk. An old stuffed dinosaur looked at him with plastic eyes from an open shelf. He heard a quiet ticking of the alarm clock coming from the low night stand. Right next to it, an adorable little boy was quietly breathing, sound asleep.
He did not activate his eyes consciously this time. They just spun to life on their own before he even considered letting them.
He took a few quiet steps and crouched next to the futon, letting his sharingan engrave the image in his brain.
…
…
What would happen to Sasuke tomorrow…?
…
Fugaku clenched his jaw and squeezed his eyes shut when a terrifying wish crossed his mind. Just where did he let their life, their reality come to… to hope that this little boy would be killed along with them. He was a man ruled by logic but this… His heart could not take this. He could not…
But he had to and he would because that was precisely what the circumstances demanded.
So he hoped, overcoming nausea… that Itachi would kill Sasuke tomorrow so the boy would not need to face the aftermath of everything that was going to happen.
But did he even have any say in that? Could he deprive Itachi even of his little brother, who he loved more than anybody else…?
But if Sasuke stayed alive…
…
He could not even bring himself to create an answer to this if.
But he could not picture his firstborn slaughtering his precious baby brother either.
Heavens. He could not even decide what he hoped for at the end.
He did not hear a single sound but unmistakably, he sensed a presence behind him. A moment later a hand squeezed his shoulder delicately. He felt warmth emanating from another body of a person who now crouched next to him. Her fingers slid though his hair at the back of his head, tangling and pulling affectionately.
“You should sleep, even if just a little” Mikoto whispered with a barely audible voice, her chin resting on his shoulder. Her warm breath brushed his neck. She was right, he should sleep. He was supposed to go to the police station the next day, live the last day of his life pretending not to know about the tragedy scheduled for the evening. He should not show himself to other people clearly sleep-deprived. He had meetings, he had appointments, he had responsibilities-
It was all so irrelevant-
They both suddenly stilled when Sasuke moved in his sleep, turning from his side to his back. He softly exhaled, took another breath and exhaled again under his parents’ alerted gazes.
Fugaku only exhaled himself when he realized that the boy would not wake up.
Sasuke’s face was now well visible in the moonlight coming through the window. His tiny nose between his closed big eyes under his spiky hair-
He could not bring himself to picture this perfect baby face on a corpse. He closed his eyes at the mere thought.
“Do you think he will kill him?” he asked and he had no idea why he asked or how he managed to push himself to ask and how his voice was still so levelled.
Mikoto did not answer in any way. He slowly looked to the right to see her profile. His wife, his beautiful precious wife, sat there with her eyes on their little boy, her expression unreadable.
Mikoto was tough, she was the toughest person he had ever met, and he has never seen her break. But now when he watched her, silent, unmoving, unresponsive… it seemed that she has just brushed her limits.
She closed her eyes and took a long, shaky breath.
It was hard and strange to see her like this. It was scary to see her on edge, about to shatter, so he pulled her in for a hug and pressed his lips to her temple. She melted into him and he extended another arm to hug her fully. Her head dropped to his collarbone and they just sat like this for another minute. And another one.
And another few minutes, too.
…
“I… hope he will.”
…
They lived in a cruel world, indeed. An excuse of a world. A hell on earth. They were about to leave this place forever, but the reality demanded a horrendous price for their freedom. They were to leave their children behind, at the mercy of this universe.
Fugaku wished for this so called freedom to be handed to somebody else. He did not want such freedom that foretold misery to Itachi and a terrifying mystery to Sasuke. His boys did not deserve such a fate.
They did not.
They didn’t…
Another minute passed and Mikoto suddenly moved in his embrace. He loosened his arms and watched her stand up next to him. She then extended one hand towards him in an inviting gesture.
“Come to bed” she whispered. Her sharingan was switched on and she was looking at him expectantly, with a shade of well-masked desperation.
He did not want to go to bed. There was no way he would get a single minute of sleep tonight and he knew he would just lie there wide awake with thoughts running wildly in his mind until dawn.
But she needed him there with her. So he took her hand and stood up and kissed her forehead, pulling her close once again.
He followed her out of their son’s room without a single glance over his shoulder, sliding the door shut.
The soft click of the wood echoed in his head for many minutes after.