Blood. There was so much blood.
The enemy was advancing more by the day, killing everyone. All he could see on the battlefield was everything coated in red. Whether that was because of his constantly activated sharingan or the bloody corpses strewn everywhere, he didn’t know.
A sharp kunai whistled past him and just missed his face. Suddenly, his opponent was in front of him. They sparred. The familiar and sharp sounds of knives clashing together, his and the other man’s yells and the metallic stench of blood filled his senses.
“Father! Father!”
All at once, he stopped dead in his tracks amidst the fight. His blood suddenly went cold.
No... that voice...
He turned back in horror as he saw his beloved second son lying on the crimson ground, a shinobi looming over him with a kunai to his neck.
“Sasuke!”
“Father, please help me!!”
The sentence was barely out of his mouth when the man slashed the child’s neck. Sasuke let out scream and blood gushed from his throat, pooling by him as the man dropped him like dead weight to the ground, a sinister smile spreading across his face.
“There you go, Uchiha.” he snarled. “Never let Konoha mess with our warriors again.”
How dare they. How dare they kill a child, kill his child.
How dare they!
He felt hurt, grief and rage all at once. He instantly caught the two men in a genjutsu, yelled and slaughtered them in hot fury until they were unrecognizable.
He rushed to his son, repeating his name, trying to patch up the fresh gash. But the body was cold, quiet, dull, unlike the beautiful son he knew, that he had.
His eyes started welling and pooling over with tears and blood as he held his child in his arms, still remembering his birth as if it was a few days ago.
He couldn’t, he couldn’t lose him now, not when he just got him.
He just got him...
..........................................................................................................
Fugaku shot up from bed with alert, widened eyes. He looked from left to right, slightly panicked.
But there was nothing. Just his wife sleeping soundly beside him, with a trickle of moonlight streaming through their window. They were in their room, in their safe compound. There was no war anymore.
It was all just a nightmare.
Fugaku breathed a heavy sigh of relief and buried his face in hands. Perhaps he’d been stressing too much lately. He didn’t usually have nightmares as severe as this.
He knew it hadn’t been real of course. Sasuke was fine. He wasn’t born when the 3rd Shinobi World War started. He was safe. Everything was safe now.
Despite that, there was still a pang in his chest that worried him. The imagery of little Sasuke’s blood momentarily played in Fugaku’s head. He flinched and shook his head.
No. That won’t happen. It won’t happen.
Sasuke was safe. Fugaku knew that well. But a part of him needed to confirm that, at the very least. To put his paternal heart at ease after the terrifying things his mind had come up with.
Quietly, Fugaku got out of bed, so as to not disturb his wife. He left the room and walked across the hallway to the entrance of Sasuke’s abode. He silently opened the door and breathed another sigh of relief.
There Sasuke was, snugly curled up in his sheets, sleeping deeply.
For a while, Fugaku lingered at the entrance, unsure whether to go back or to walk in. He didn’t want to disturb him, but just to check on him... just to see him...
Careful not to wake the boy, he walked in the room and knelt next to Sasuke’s bed to gaze at him. It was shocking, the man thought, that Sasuke was seven years old already. His face made him look much younger than that.
That innocent face... Sasuke looked so much like Mikoto. Fugaku smiled at the thought. He looked even more like his mother when he was asleep like this, so peaceful and unbothered by anything else. Like the child he was supposed to be.
Fugaku reached out a hand to gently pet his son’s hair. The boy had gotten his stubbornness too. The perseverance of learning new techniques just to impress him always surprised the man. Sometimes, Sasuke would work harder than Itachi did at a technique, never leaving it for days on end. His unyielding will to not rest until he perfected it was to be respected.
Fugaku suddenly felt a twinge of guilt in his chest. Sasuke had done it all for him, so his own father could acknowledge his skill and take pride in him. Had he acknowledged it before Sasuke mastered Katon? He didn’t know. That itself spoke volumes about how he behaved toward his second son.
He needed to fix that, but was it too late? Did Sasuke already have an image of him that was huge and neglectful? Dismissive? Ignorant?
Because if he had, then Fugaku failed as a father.
The image of Sasuke’s slit throat flashed in his mind again. What if he lost Sasuke now? What would happen then? He would leave thinking his father didn’t love him. Fugaku shook his head
No... I won’t let that happen. I won’t lose you. I can’t.
Sasuke didn’t deserve to be neglected. He was pure, gentle, and hardworking. He wasn’t Itachi, but he would always be special, his own person.
His beloved boy.
From now on, he had to make the firm resolve to train him even more, to take pride in him, to protect him until his last breath. He wouldn’t let Sasuke ever feel like he was alone and forgotten.
“...I’m sorry, Sasuke,” he murmured finally, although too quiet for the sleeping little raven to hear.
“...I really am proud of you. And I’ll always be proud of you, no matter what you do...”
I hope I will be able to tell you that one day.
He brushed Sasuke’s bangs out of the way to press a gentle kiss on his forehead.
“And I vow to protect you until my last breath.”
Whatever he said just now, he meant it sincerely, and he will always intend to mean it for the rest of his life.
He smiled again and kissed Sasuke’s tender cheek.
Yes. Fugaku was the proudest father in the world, for he had the most wonderful sons anybody could ever ask for.