Chapter Text
“Psych wants me to report a problem with the Uchiha.”
“Woo hoo,” Fuyuki replies barely dragging her eyes from the latest intel on Kiri. They’re where she wants them to be; anxious about Uzushio’s resurgence and the cultural influence Akiyama Sato is exerting through Wave. It won’t be long until they notice she’s been picking off their non-vital messengers or her interference in their effort to reestablish an embassy in Fire. Terumii will recognise her hand, which is what she wants. It means she’ll be looking the wrong way when Frost undercuts them and closes off their trade routes to Earth and Wind. She likes Mei, considers her a worthy adversary, but she doesn’t take chances. Water could be a hell of an ally and the harder she presses now the easier it will be when she gets them to a table.
With a flourish she authorises a scatter attack along Fire’s border. There’s a little no man’s land there she can push into a contested zone if she’s careful. If Shimura Danzo is the same man he was in the war he’ll seed it with distrust himself. “Alright. What did he do now?”
Dosa huffs, flopping into his seat. “I just don’t know what to do with him.”
“No one does.” She feels a distinct sympathy for Konoha. There is nothing you can do with an asset like Uchiha Sasuke. He’s every wrong kind of broken: his family is dead but he’s not really an orphan, his loyalty is wayward but it’s not for sale, he’s absurdly powerful for his age but he has no ambitions you can mold. You can predict him in broad strokes but no matter how many people she interrogates she can’t find the essential piece she needs to slot him in her plans. He’s not quite a variable. He’s not quite loyal. She has enough on him to hold him but not forever, not even for long. “That’s why we ended up with him.”
Dosa looks at her impassively. “Can I reiterate,” he repeats for the thousandth time, “what a bad deal that was.”
“It wasn’t.”
He ignores her. “His psych profile shifted again.” He counts them off on his fingers. “Antisocial, depressed, a five on the scale for disassociation. He doesn’t have a problem following orders but he’s twitchy. I can’t trust he’ll follow an order if it presses too hard on his buttons. Three strikes is the limit, remember. I know you want to save every broken toy soldier but some are just too damaged.”
As much as she loves Dosa it’s times like these she’s painfully reminded that he comes from a different world. Those cracks are why she keeps him, accommodates him when any one else would break him until he complied. In this world that painful struggle of realisation and questioning is what keeps truly great shinobi unbroken. Hopefully it will be what allows them all to work towards peace. “Five out of ten isn’t bad.”
“It’s a scale of six.”
“Do we have sixes?” Dosa rolls his eyes, indicating that that isn’t the point. “Well.”
“Why are you so invested?” Dosa asks. It’s a question he’s been sitting on for awhile.
She considers that. What made her invest in Sasuke is at once as big as a kinship she feels for him, built through that one hellish mission she backed his brother on, and as small as the token of having the last sharingan. She doesn’t move for less than total surety or total surrender and Sasuke is not either. He won’t ever trust her, he won’t ever believe her. He can’t.
Maybe it’s this: she can offer him a kindness she was never given.
Not that he knows that. Not that he ever will. There’s a potential greatness him. A compassion she gets glimpses of sometimes. If his family had lived he would’ve been a good man. If she can just get enough time, enough space in his head, maybe she can at least give him a path to being a peaceful one. That urge is lead entirely by the part of her that suffocated in Kumogakure. The daughter of the mountains burying nearly all her siblings because the men in the valleys couldn’t help themselves; they had to reach for more power.
All the old families share the same story. The endless pursuit of power chewed them all up and spat them all out. Senju, Hashira, Uzumaki, Oonoki, Hyuuga, Matsushita, Kaguya, Uchiha. A straight line back to the Ootsutsuki. Nearly all of those families are dead now, blown out like a candle in a storm. Other names, although no less bloody, have risen to fill their places. Power rooted in violence is a cycle.
Come hell, come high water, she will break that.
She pauses while writing a missive to Frost asking them to help destroy the rebel stronghold sitting on Kusagakure's grain supply. Maybe that's it. Sometimes the weapon that cuts that thread is kindness. Maybe that works better.
Dosa fidgets, she spares a thought for the scars on his fingers, some are new. She knows he just brought Sasuke and Haru back from a track-and-bag but the summary on the report didn’t indicate any serious action. “It’s just not what I’d expect from you.” He mutters.
That she understands even if it annoys her. A reputation built on the back of what civilians cutely call ‘war crimes’ isn’t an easy thing to shake off. She doesn’t bother. A tool is a tool. But she thought he was smarter than that. “Maybe I’m a better actress than I thought if you believe a bingo book from nearly a decade ago over your eyes and ears.” She forgives him, after all he can’t peer inside her mind. “It’s like this,” how does she explain this so someone who never grew up in this vicious cycle can understand? “If I can’t give Sasuke, who isn’t responsible for most of his circumstances, who hasn’t participated in the wider shinobi system in years, if ever, and who when given an opportunity has shown a remarkable penchant for humanity, the benefit of the doubt, I might as well walk over to the nearest shinobi centre and kill all of them. From the youngest babe to the oldest veteran.” Her voice is measured and calm. No more invested than a comment on the weather. Dosa blanches. Fuyuki nods to herself, she’s on the right track. “Then I might as well go to the next one and do the same. Then I might as well go grab the nine tails and set it loose to lay the world to waste. And then, finally, I might as well piss on the ashes of everything I’ve destroyed and lament how there’s nothing to build from.” She seals it with a phrase that knocks around her head sometimes. “We are not what was done to us.”
Dosa, to his credit, recovers remarkably. “And,” he grimaces shakily down at his hands, “Uchiha Itachi made a hell of a deal.”
Fuyuki smiles. “And that.”