Chapter Text
I'm not the person that I thought I was
I couldn't tell you where the ache came from
Maybe born in a storm beneath an angry sky
Now it's raining in my head nearly all the time
Now It's raining in my head and I don't know why- Scars by the crane wives
When the boy dreams he dreams of crows. Big black oil slicked creatures, petrifying in their multitudes. They dart this way and that, slicing at his skin and nipping at his feet until he can't stand. His knees buckle and he can do nothing but watch. Watch as they swarm the corpses of his clan. The ones that don't fly- feast. They feast on the flesh of his family, their beaks slicked with blood and they mock him. The boy curls into himself. He shuts his eyes and he shields his ears from their mocking laughter.
But he cannot shield himself for long.
Sooner or later something forces him to look up and forward and he sees them. Those eyes. Red and angry and a mirror of his own. And the crows start chanting.
It's all your fault.
All your fault.
Sasuke woke up with a start. He didn't scream. He'd long since learned that screaming would not help him. It was a sign of weakness. Father would not approve. Sasuke clutched his blanket closer to him and pushed himself into a sitting position. His hands groped near aimlessly in the dark until they settled on the cool metal of his headband. He ran his thumb over the ingrained symbol of the Hidden leaf village. Surely father would be proud of this. Sasuke had scored the highest in his class after days of practicing every jutsu they had been taught at school. His cloning jutsu had been near perfect with the exception of the third clone. He hadn't been able to replicate the scar on his upper arm just right but he was almost there. Sasuke scoffed. Almost wasn't good enough. Not when there was someone higher still. Sasuke's grip on his headband tightened subconsciously.
Itachi.
The joy and bane of the Uchiha clan. All the pride in his father's eyes was reserved only for Itachi and father had paid dearly for it.
Sasuke let out a deep breath -which stirred the dust in the room- and tried not to shiver. His eyes now adjusted to the darkness of the night raked over the remains of his family's compound. He had to be here tonight. Tomorrow would be his first official day of genin training. He was one step closer to his goal. But there was nothing to celebrate. There was no time to be coddled or congratulated and he could afford no distractions. He had to catch up with Itachi.
He had to kill him.
And here in the ruins of his old home and its suffocating silence he was reminded of why.
He shouldn't be here- technically. The village elders had assigned a modest apartment to him- closer to the hokage tower. He had been afforded no real guardians but caretakers from the major clans were sent to watch over him on occasion. They kept him clothed and fed and made sure he stayed out of trouble. However today they all seemed to be occupied.
They wouldn’t tell him what happened but Sasuke was (almost) a fully trained Shinobi! He'd managed to catch wind of what had happened by carefully and precisely attaching his ear to his apartment door while two caretakers from the Hyuga clan were talking. The conversation had been fragmented and stilted but there was one name that kept being mentioned.
Naruto Uzumaki.
The dead last, the troublemaker of the village and an orphan just like him. But unlike him the adults didn't look at Naruto with pity. They looked at him with contempt. Instead of a comfortable home in the heart of the village they had banished him to its outskirts near the forest. He couldn’t understand why. Sure the boy was a nuisance but Sasuke couldn't think of anything Naruto had done to warrant the stares or the spitting or the name calling. And the boy had done a lot.
Sasuke was assaulted with the image of Naruto just the day before. The Uzumaki had bumped into Sasuke while he was practicing for his entrance exam (he had skipped school in favour of perfecting his jutsu's.) Sasuke was forced to take in the sight of him. Messy blonde hair and blue eyes,those strange whiskers on his cheeks, his oversized goggles, his atrocity of an orange jumpsuit and two conspicuous cans of red paint. If Sasuke hadn't known any better he would have thought that Naruto was trying to be sneaky. Surely the idiot knew that he couldn’t walk around the village looking like that without attracting a few stares.
“What are you-”
“Move out of the way. Can’t you see that I'm on a mission?”
Sasuke was stunned into silence. Before he could respond with a slew of insults that would bring his mother to tears Naruto placed a red hand on Sasuke's arm and dragged him into an alleyway. Shortly after, a group of Jonin rushed past them.
“Naruto!”
“Get back here you brat!”
“The Hokage will hear about this!”
The Hokage? It was one thing for Naruto to cause havoc across the village and it was another thing for him to drag Sasuke into it. Getting into trouble with the Hokage would surely deter him from his mission which Sasuke thought was a lot more important than whatever nonsense Naruto was up to. Sasuke ripped his arm away from Naruto's hand. He was just about to practice his taijutsu on Naruto when something stopped him in his tracks.
Naruto was smiling. It was a big, stupid mischievous grin that made his eyes squint shut. He had a chipped tooth. Before Sasuke could do anything, Naruto brought a reddened finger to his lips.
“Shhh.” He said and he ran off. Gone as quickly as he came.
Sasuke didn't know what to make of the entire interaction. “Whatever.” He said to no one in particular as he shoved his hands in his pockets and walked away. And if he was fighting back a smile of his own no one was there to see.
Even now Sasuke had to fight off a smile at the memory. He couldn’t understand why. There was nothing funny about being a nuisance. A family full of police officers would tell you that. But Naruto seemed to have the power to make everything seem funny. He was like a lingering trace of warmth on a cold day.
A stray gust of wind flooded the compound making Sasuke shiver more aggressively. Sasuke focused his gaze on the spot where he had found his parents' bodies. The blood was still there. Rusted and congealed. The only thing he had left of his parents. Konoha could never wash this house of its sins. Sasuke's headband was like ice against his palm.
He had no need for warmth.
What use was there in thinking about Naruto? He had nothing to do with his goal. Besides, their already scarce interactions would only grow in scarcity from tomorrow onwards. After Naruto's dismissal performance on the exams Sasuke wouldn't be surprised if the village barred Naruto from Shinobi training entirely.
Naruto made for a sorry sight at their commencement ceremony. Sasuke had been ready to leave the moment he received his headband. He wasn't keen on hearing the uncomfortable way the adults would speak about him when they took note of the clan symbol sewn onto his back. Besides he had no one to celebrate with and the sight of all the other kids with their parents scratched at an old ache. It made him feel angry and raw and ultimately childish. So what if mother couldn't hug him? Who cared if his eyes stung? Sasuke knew the source of his pain and he was one step closer to ending it. Even so, Sasuke couldn't help but succumb to the weakness that was loneliness in that moment. Lonelier still was the knowledge that no one would understand what he felt.
Except…
Sasuke scanned the yard for that familiar burst of orange until he found him. Naruto looked like a dimmed candle sitting alone on the swing set far from his peers. Sasuke took a bitter, ugly comfort in the knowledge that at least one kid in the village had it worse than he did. Still the sight of Naruto looking so downtrodden bothered Sasuke for some reason. Perhaps it was because it was such a far departure from the boy that had grinned at him yesterday. Sasuke felt an odd compulsion to go to him and to tell him to stop looking so pathetic - to tell him to try again. But something kept him firmly in place and Sasuke could do nothing but watch as the wildfire of a boy became nothing but an ember.
When it all got too much for him- the stares and the comments aimed at both him and Naruto- Sasuke made his way back to his apartment. And once he realized his caretakers were distracted he made his way to the Uchiha compound.
So there Sasuke sat alone in the only home he had ever known, fighting the cold with his burning rage and keeping vigil for the ghosts of his family. Yet even then he found a quiet warmth in the thought of an orange jumpsuit and stupid grin. It was selfish and horrid but Sasuke found a sense of relief in the knowledge that Naruto would not be continuing this journey with him. Sasuke was training to become a weapon with a singular purpose, he couldn’t afford to succumb to the mushy weakness he felt around Naruto. He concentrated on the spot where he had found his parents and recalled how Itachi stood over him with his blood slicked sword. He held onto that feeling of fear and pain and reminded himself of how much work he still had to do. Eventually he was lulled to a fitful sleep by these memories, shivering from more than just the cold.
The crows were waiting.