Chapter Text
Sasuke doesn’t make it back in time to stop the massacre.
He’d known this was a possibility. The thing about frantically cobbling together some kind of time travel seal in the midst of the literal apocalypse while your allies and resources were all steadily picked off in a horrifying countdown to The End is that they didn’t exactly have time to test-run the damn thing.
They’d had no idea how far back Sasuke would be sent, or how much of him --- his memories, his cognizance, his skills and abilities and chakra reserves --- would actually make it back to his previous self. The hope was that the sharingan would help at least a little in that regard, but they just had no way of knowing how much of a difference Sasuke’s eyes would actually make.
Well. Now he knows.
His main concern had been that the seal wouldn’t work at all --- that even if parts of his memories were sent back in time it wouldn’t make enough of a difference to sway his younger self, and things would still play out exactly as they already had. His second concern was that he’d be sent all the way back to his birth, fully cognizant and aware, and have to spend years trapped in an infant body while his memories and awareness slowly eroded. There were infinite possible ways for this little trip through time to end horribly, and Sasuke had braced himself for all of them.
Thankfully, he seems to have gotten the best-case scenario. The seal appears to have worked perfectly, which is frankly a miracle. Sasuke wakes up in the body of his younger self with all of his memories intact. His chakra reserves have not come with him, which is maybe for the best given how underdeveloped his chakra coils still are, but he still has both his mangekyo and his rinnegan. He can’t use them at all without risking immediate fatal chakra exhaustion, but he has them, and that’s good enough for him. He landed at a time before the left the village, so he won’t have to deal with walking that back or with Orochimaru’s... everything. All together, their final gambit paid off with interest! Despite all odds, Sasuke has been blessed by the absolute ideal outcome. He really couldn’t have asked for a better landing.
The Uchiha compound is cold and empty. His older brother is a nukenin, working with the Akatsuki and wanted across the elemental nations. The man responsible for it all is sitting on his cushy council seat, widely respected and allowed to keep consolidating power as long as he doesn’t do anything too public for the third Hokage to sweep under the rug. The only other living member of his clan is a mad man, scheming to bring about the end of the world. All of his comrades are dead and gone.
Sasuke Uchiha is ten years old.
He drops to his knees, buries his face in his hands, and screams.
Step one of the plan is to come up with a plan.
If they had been able to send Sasuke’s physical body back, the plan would have been to go on a rampage, starting with Danzo and ending with Zetsu. As it is, Sasuke has a long and grueling amount of training ahead of him to even get close to where he was before. This is extra infuriating, because it’s not like he wasn’t already training his ass off the first time around. Basically every waking moment he had after the destruction of his clan was spent either training or plotting, and honestly replacing his plotting time with more training isn’t likely to help him at all. The body needs to rest and recuperate in between intensive conditioning, or he’ll ending doing more harm to himself than good.
He spends a half hour drafting himself a training plan and outlining a schedule, then remembers he still needs to go to school and rewrites the whole damn thing. This leaves him with massive blocks of time every single day he’ll be wasting in classes he already passed. Frustrated to the point of genuine rage at the whole situation, Sasuke punches a hole in the wall. then he stares out the window, going through all the pros and cons of leaving Konoha again. Unfortunately, if he did leave the village, he’d have to survive on his own out there. He’s more than capable of it, but having to hunt his own food and find his own shelter --- or wandering between villages and towns, finding work to pay for those things --- would probably cut even deeper into the time he could spend training than attending the Academy will.
The only place he can go where he knows he’ll be pushed even harder than he can push himself would be back to Orochimaru. Otogakure was already established by now, right? Sasuke remembers how to find it. He could leave Konoha tonight and be offering himself up to the Snake Sanin within a couple weeks.
It would be fine. He did it before. He knows he can kill Orochimaru again. The only trick would be to avoid getting body-snatched before he’s strong enough to do it, but he can figure something out there, too. And this time around, Sasuke actually knows what’s waiting for him in the Hidden Sound. He knows what to expect, what to brace himself for, how to grit his teeth and endure it. It would be fine. Honestly, he’s way better equipped on this second go-around to handle it than he was last time. He’d probably even get more out of it this time, since now he knows what makes Orochimaru tic and how to squirm his way into the snake’s good graces.
All together, it’s not a bad plan. It is, in fact, probably the best plan he has if he wants to prioritize gaining as much strength as possible as quickly as possible. Short of his life, the things Orochimaru will want access to in exchange are a small price to pay for the power to save the world.
The chill of an examination table against his naked back. The ache of leather straps winched too-tight across his body. Orochimaru’s ice cold hands on Sasuke’s bare skin, his voice low and purring and telling him to breathe through the pain, dear.
It’s nothing, in the grand scheme of things. Trivial. As a shinobi, for him to reject the most efficient option over something as meaningless as his feelings is absolutely downright pathetic.
But right now, Sasuke has a body Orochimaru never touched.
Somehow that thought has him scrambling across the room so he can retch into the trash can. Nothing comes out, because he hasn’t eaten anything yet today, so he’s left clutching at the barrel and dry-heaving until bile burns its way up his throat and drips, sluggish, over his lips and chin. For a second he expects a cold hand on his face, a thumb to swipe through the filth and smear it over his cheek, fingers to force his mouth open wider until his jaw aches.
Now, now, my dear, you’ve made such a mess.
Sasuke gags again.
I don’t want to, he thinks, stupid and weak and childish. He tries to swallow the nausea and the whining both, but the truth and another wave of bile both rise up and force their way out of him. I don’t want to go back to Orochimaru. Please, please, I don’t want to.
... It’ll be a last resort then.
Which leaves him circling back to: Step one of the plan is to come up with a plan.
After two consecutive childish little tantrums, Sasuke can’t bare to stay inside. He takes a shower with the temperature up so high his skin is raw and stinging, gets himself dressed and, feeling naked without a blade at his hip, darts through the Uchiha compound with his eyes trained carefully on the ground. Huh. It’s been so long since he’s been here, he’d almost forgotten he had that habit.
Outside, Konoha is green and bustling and alive, and Sasuke jumps onto a roof and just. Stands there, for a moment, taking it in.
On the one hand, it’s stifling. All the bitterness and rage and resentment he felt before is still here, and he looks down at the crowds of people who walk past the mausoleum where his family was murdered and hates them for their smiles and their laughter, hates them for daring to find happiness in this rainy spring day when his entire clan was slaughtered in this very village for the sake of one man’s delusions. He hates the third Hokage and the council members who let it happen, he hates the other clans who watched the Uchiha be pushed out out of the village and did nothing for them, he hates the Hidden Leaf and everyone in it. He hates Itachi for letting himself be manipulated into it and he hates Itachi for not killing him too and he hates Itachi for dying and leaving him all over again. He hates Itachi for not taking Sasuke with him when he left. He hates Itachi for never coming back.
He hates himself, too, of course, for too many reasons to list.
But on the other hand... on the other hand, oh, god, there are people here. People who are alive and breathing and real, not specters conjured by the Infinite Tsukuyomi. Real, living people who will keep existing even if Sasuke isn’t looking at them. There are lush trees and blooming plants and critters scurrying over branches and electrical poles. There is life here, vibrant and beautiful, after so, so long spent in a wasteland, and for the third time today Sasuke’s body starts to shake.
It’s late March. The new school year starts in a couple days, and kids are making the most of the last few days of spring break, running through the streets and flitting in and out of shops despite the gray sky. There are kids, and they’re alive, and they’ll get to go to school. There’s a school to go to. There are shops manned by shopkeeps and people buying things at the market and stray cats begging for a bite of octopus from the takoyaki stall owner, who grumbles but feeds them anyway. Sasuke’s head and shoulders are already damp from the drizzle. It’s cool and clean on his fevered skin. The air feels good in his lungs.
Aimless, Sasuke wanders.
It’s... kind of unpleasant, actually, to realize how much he’s forgotten about the layout of Konoha’s streets. They were always winding things, twisting in on themselves, narrowing drastically between buildings. Viewed from above, the village layout looks like the roots of a great tree, all organic shapes. Sasuke never knew if that was intentional or just due to poor planning. When he was a kid --- the last time he was a kid --- he’d thought he knew every dead end and side street like the back of his hand, could have mapped the layout of this village in his sleep. Now he finds himself getting lost, and doubling back, and getting lost again.
He could take to the roofs. It would give him a better vantage point, let him gain his bearings. It would also take him out of the crowded streets, lift him above the jostle and shove of all these damn people all around him. He wouldn’t need to quick-step away from a pack of children too young for the Academy as they stumble out of a sweets shop, giggling with their hands and faces sticky. He wouldn’t wince at the shouting of construction workers as they strain to be heard over the hammering and clanking of their machines. He wouldn’t be able to stop, and kneel, and run his hand down the back of a stray cat that’s only ever known humans to be friendly and helpful.
Sasuke doesn’t take to the roofs.
Because Sasuke doesn’t take to the roofs, he gets lost again, and because he gets lost again he ends up in a part of the village he’s only ever skirted the edges of before. Konoha’s red light district is small and relatively cut-off from the rest of the village, reachable only through a few back streets so narrow a group of adults would need to walk them single-file. Massive trees with thick, cloaking branches sprout through and around the surrounding buildings, blanketing the whole quarter in shade.
Even in the daylight, doors are open and mysterious shops are in business. Down the block a man is turned away from a gambling house and begins to throw a tantrum. A restaurant that’s almost a certainly a front for something serves breakfast to exactly two clients, who speak furtively over their coffees. A woman dressed in only a gauzy kimono leans against a balcony, smoking a cigarette. The damp spring morning has turned the fabric translucent and molded it along her body. The seduction is so artfully done Sasuke wouldn’t be surprised to find out she’s actually a kunoichi, under cover at the brothel to keep an eye on things.
Sasuke wouldn’t have any interest in her even if his body at this age wasn’t physically incapable of it, so he keeps his eyes to himself and his hands in his pockets as he turns to head back the way he came. If he uses the Hokage building as a land mark in the distance he can find his way back to the main square easy enough---
“Let go of me!”
The world narrows down to a collection of facts.
One: somebody bumps into the tantruming man, and he takes advantage of having a target for his aggression.
Two: that target is a young boy, no older than Sasuke is now, who clutches a bag to his chest with one hand and thrashes furiously in the man’s grip.
Three: the boy is blond. His eyes are blue. His voice is familiar.
Sasuke is ten. His limbs are poorly proportioned and barely muscled. His chakra is non-existent compared to what he’s used to it being. To a civilian, he still hits like a sledgehammer, leaping up and slamming his knuckles to the man’s temple in a punch that knocks him unconscious before his body hits the ground.
Sasuke doesn’t check if the guy is still breathing. All of his attention, every ounce of focus he’s capable of, is zeroed-in on the small, shaking blond boy in front of him.
Naruto.
He fell in a sprawled heap when the man dropped him, knees and elbows skidding over the rough cobblestone. Rather than break his fall, Naruto prioritized the bag he’s holding, shielding it from damage. Sasuke will wonder about that later. For now he’s just trying to remember how to breathe.
Naruto is so small. Sasuke is too, but Naruto is... skinny. Too skinny for his age, thin limbs and bony joints and pointy little face. He doesn’t react at all to his bleeding knees or to the bruise blooming on his cheek where the guy must have hit him before Sasuke made it across the street. He blinks up at Sasuke in mute confusion, then full-body jolts and checks the bag he’s holding with something like panic. Whatever’s in it must be in okay condition, because his shoulders relax and his next breath comes slow and steady.
Good for him. Sasuke still kind of feels like he’s about to start hyperventilating.
Naruto turns his little face up to him again. He glances at the man, then at Sasuke, who hasn’t blinked or taken a breath or processed a single thing going on around him since he heard Naruto’s panicked voice from down the street. Naruto. Naruto. This is Naruto, young and alive and that guy was gonna hurt him—!
His face must be doing a thing, because Naruto eyes him warily and tenses up again. “I could have handled it,” he says, defensive.
Bristling, Sasuke snaps “You’re welcome,” because what the hell?
Immediately Naruto is on his feet, scowling and furious. He’s shorter than Sasuke, and so, so thin. “Teme, I didn’t say thank you!” His knees are still bleeding.
“Dobe!” Sasuke pushes into his space, meets Naruto’s scowl with his own. “I just saved your ass, have some gratitude!”
“Who’d be grateful to you? You didn’t save me! I told you I could have handled it!”
“Obviously not or you wouldn’t have needed me to handle it for you!”
“I didn’t need you to!”
“I should have just let that guy beat you up, ingrate!”
“Maybe you should’ve! Wait, no, he wasn’t gonna beat me up! I was gonna beat him up!”
They’re nose-to-nose now, both of them breathing heavy and gnashing their teeth. The bruise across Naruto’s cheek is steadily darkening from red to purple. His knees are still bleeding, and he doesn’t even seem to notice.
At any time, in any world, at any point in their lives, Naruto Uzumaki exists specifically to piss Sasuke off.
He grabs Naruto by the front of his shirt, planning to haul him up off his feet and strangle him. Even at ten they already had a routine to their stupid fights, made only more explosive by the fact that Sasuke was still trying to convince himself he hated them. He expects Naruto to respond to being grabbed like a squirming, yowling cat, twisting boneless out of Sasuke’s grip and grappling him back until they’re rolling around on the cobblestones trying to murder each other. Instead, Naruto yelps and curls in on himself, tucking the bag protectively to his chest, shouting “Don’t!”
Sasuke stops. He doesn’t let Naruto go, but he doesn’t wring his stupid, scrawny neck either. “Don’t what, dobe? What do you even have in there anyway?”
“None of your business!” Naruto snaps. “Lemme go, teme. I’ll kick you in the nuts!”
“I’d like to see you try,” Sasuke snarls, but he does, in fact, let Naruto go. One of them needs to be the reasonable one, and let’s face it, that’s always been Sasuke.
Back on his feet, Naruto twitches in place like he can’t decide if he should stand there glaring suspiciously at Sasuke or run for the hills. His fucking knees are still bleeding, and if he doesn’t do something about that soon Sasuke is gonna bash his empty head off the cobblestones.
They’re prevented from devolving into violence again by the sound of a low, pained grunt. The guy Sasuke punched is apparently regaining consciousness.
“Huh,” Sasuke murmurs, without turning to look. “He’s still alive.”
“Wh--- you idiot! You were trying to kill him?!” Naruto moves to shove past Sasuke like he’s gonna check the guy is okay.
The guy who was just trying to beat him up.
That guy.
Sasuke snags him by the back of the shirt and thinks about strangling him again. “Leave him,” he snaps, already hauling Naruto in the opposite direction, back towards one of the thin little alleys that will get them out of this part of the fucking village.
“Wh--- hey! Damn it, let me go!”
“Shut up!”
If they circle around the red light district they’ll end up on a back street that winds out of the village, towards a training ground set deep in the forest that butts up against the river. Itachi used to go there when he wanted to train without Sasuke following after him. In hindsight, Itachi definitely knew Sasuke was following after him anyway, but at the time Sasuke was convinced he was oh-so-sneaky and he always felt very pleased with himself for managing to spy on his big brother’s super secret training.
Naruto swears and fights him every step of the damn way, of course, and Sasuke ends up needing both hands and all the strength of his back to haul the squirming idiot along, but they do eventually make it to the training ground, and it’s just as empty as Sasuke hoped it would be. The river is probably freezing, but by now the rain has stopped, and the sunlight filtering in through the trees is bright and warm.
Naruto redoubles his efforts to get away as they come up on the bank. “What, you’re gonna drown me? Hey! Hey, lemme go! I mean it, Sasuke!”
“I’m going to clean your knees!” Sasuke shouts.
“Hah?” Naruto stops trying to run away, swiveling his head around to boggle at him as if Sasuke was the one being ridiculous right now. “What for?”
He’ll kill him. He’s wanted to kill him before but he means it for real this time. Sasuke is actually, literally going to kill him. “So they don’t get infected? Moron?”
Naruto regards him with open skepticism for a moment, then turns his head up imperiously, nose tilted to the sky. He loosens his grip on the bag to cross his arms. “I don’t believe you.”
“What the hell? Why?! Why would I lie?”
“Why would you tell the truth? Who knows what a bastard like you is planning!”
“Amaterasu help me,” Sasuke groans. “Fine. Do it yourself or get an infection, I don’t care.”
Apparently not expecting Sasuke to suddenly let go of him, Naruto stumbles a little bit, catching himself one-handed on a training post because the other is still holding that dumb bag.
Naruto stares at Sasuke. Sasuke stares at Naruto.
This is stupid.
“Clean your goddamn knees,” Sasuke tells him. Naruto sticks his tongue out. Sasuke is going to drown him in the river.
Thankfully, the idiot actually does listen, kicking off his shoes to wade into the water. He whines and complains about the cold the whole time but he does wash the blood off his own legs, and even takes the time to pick some gravel out of the wounds. In the meantime, Sasuke digs out bandages and ointment from his pockets.
It won’t be until their final year at the Academy that the kids their age get cleared to carry ninja tools around in public, so Sasuke isn’t wearing a thigh pouch. Not that it ever stopped him from having access to those tools, but legally Academy students are only allowed to handle weapons in the classroom or undergoing supervised training with their clan. As far as Sasuke was concerned, being the last Uchiha and all, as long as he kept his weapon training inside the Uchiha district, he wasn’t doing anything wrong.
Still, leaving the house unarmed and empty-handed this morning was not an option. He’d armed himself with the few weapons he could discreetly hide in his clothing and stuffed his pockets with an approximation of the supplies he’s used to carrying with him.
By the time Naruto is finished being a big whiny baby, Sasuke has laid out what he’ll need. He pats the top of a large stone he’s using as a table, telling the idiot to “come sit down.”
Naruto squints suspiciously at him. The expression scrunches up his nose and the whisker marks on his cheeks and makes him look even more like a little fox kit. Sasuke truly does hate him.
“What’s your game here, teme?” Naruto asks, but he still picks his way carefully over and boosts himself up onto the rock. The scrapes on his knees are deep --- no surprise, given how much they bled --- and ragged with torn skin. The flesh around them is bruised dark and spotted with burst blood vessels. It’s a tiny injury to a shinobi, barely worth acknowledging. The Naruto Sasuke left behind would have healed from such a minor scrape before the blood had even started to drip.
Or, well. The fox would have healed it. Sasuke shouldn’t be surprised that’s not happening now, but somehow he keeps expecting the wounds to close themselves up neatly, skin knitting itself back together like it was never opened to begin with.
Since Sasuke refuses to indulge stupidity, he doesn’t even acknowledge the question, instead getting started cleaning and disinfecting the cuts. He was obviously being naive to think Naruto was done being a big whiny baby, because he yelps and squirms and complains the whole time about how bad it stings. Sasuke tells him to shut up once and otherwise ignores him until the last bandage is taped in place.
When Sasuke leans back, Naruto peers at his own legs like he can’t believe what he’s seeing. Not that there’s much to see really, just two squares of gauze taped over his knees, each surrounded by an ugly, splotchy bruise. Speaking of.
“Lean down,” Sasuke tells him. “And hold still.” This time the idiot doesn't fight him, just blinks at him wide-eyed and obeys. Sasuke thinks he might even be holding his breath when he dabs the bruise cream over one too-thin cheek, up across Naruto’s temple and the bridge of his nose, careful on the delicate, swollen skin under his eye. Sakura could do better --- hell, Sakura could have such minor injuries patched up in seconds, without the need for medicine at all --- but with the limited supplies and medical knowledge he has, Sasuke thinks he does an okay job.
“You’ll need to keep putting bruise cream on it for a couple days,” he says. “And you should probably take a blood thinning supplement. These bruises are bad, they might clot.”
Naruto blink-blink-blinks at him. Sasuke stares back.
“Oh. Uh, sure.”
“Hn.”
Clean-up takes only a second, and Sasuke has his whole makeshift medicine kit stashed away back in his pockets by the time Naruto finally gets off the rock.
The idiot still isn't saying anything. Sasuke didn't see him hit his head when the guy was smacking him around, but it could have happened. Not that a Naruto with brain damage would be all that different than a Naruto without brain damage honestly, the damn airhead.
Naruto scuffs the toe of his shoe against the ground. Sasuke is about to snap at him to spit whatever it is out when he murmurs "Um. Thanks."
Oh.
"Hn. Sure," Sasuke says, because he refuses to sit in another awkward silence. "What did that guy want with you, anyway?"
As if it never even occured to him to wonder, Naruto tilts his head. "Oh, uhhhh. I dunno! I think he was just mad he's bad at gambling. That guy gets kicked out of the casino like, a lot."
Sasuke really is going to kill him. "You go near that place a lot?"
Immediately, Naruto is prickly again. "What do you care?"
"I don't!"
"Then why did you ask?"
"Why are you being so damn stubborn?!"
"Why are you being so weird?!"
"Can you— just— ugh!" Sasuke finds himself gripping his own hair in frustration. Honestly, Naruto of any age is so goddamn infuriating it's a miracle Sasuke doesn't tear it out. "Why are you like this?"
Naruto is getting in Sasuke's face again. Sasuke doesn't remember Naruto being this much shorter than him, and the fact that the idiot is on his toes to glare into Sasuke's eyes is kind of pissing him off. Why is he so short? Why is he so skinny? Did he always look like that?
"Like what? You're the one who's acting crazy?"
"How am I acting crazy? All I did was make sure you were okay!"
"Exactly!"
Oh for fuck's sake.
"Naruto," Sasuke says, slowly, because he's talking to an idiot and he needs to remember that. "You are my classmate. It is not weird that I made sure you were okay after an adult tried to hurt you. That's normal."
More wide-eyed, startled blinking. Maybe he really did hit his head. Sasuke should check him for a concussion. "That's not normal," Naruto argues. "Nobody else ever does it."
Oh.
Sasuke takes a slow, deep breath. Holds it for a second. Lets it out. "Yeah, well. I'm better than everybody else."
Naruto scoffs, but his shoulders are losing their tension again. They seem to keep see-sawing about it, passing stress and suspicion back and forth like they're competing to see which one of them can make the other more upset. Naruto is definitely winning. Sasuke doesn't mind losing this particular challenge to him, since the prize is being the world's biggest idiot.
"So damn full of yourself, teme."
With that, the argument seems to be over. It's… almost a relief, actually, to realize they've always been like this. Attack and retreat, going at each other over the slightest provocation and then stepping back just as quickly, for just as flimsy a reason. At the end there was too much going on to really indulge in friendly bickering, and before that the fights they got into were the world-ending, chidori-vs-rasengan kind of fights. Somewhere in all of that, Sasuke had forgotten that fighting with Naruto used to be easy. Used to be fun, even, for all he refused to admit it.
Sage, he used to be so stupid.
Without letting himself overthink it, Sasuke says "It's almost lunch time. Come on, I'll buy you ramen."
Predictably, Naruto lights up. "Really?! No take backs!"
Already turning away, Sasuke shoves his hands in his pockets. "Dobe. Hurry up."
Naruto yelps, and swears at him, and his footsteps pound on the damp earth as he rushes to catch up.