Sasuke considered revenge.
Konoha had to die. There was no question.
But now that he had the full context Sasuke considered if a sword through the heart would be the most satisfying way to end it, no matter how it would slate his blood-lust. Konoha thought the Uchiha were irrational, that they more than anyone perpetuated their own misery by chasing revenge, through succumbing to the so-called ‘curse of hatred.’ He hated them, of that he had no doubt, but when he remembered his auntie who welcomed him home in the afternoon he doubted she had ever felt the depth of hatred he felt now. He considered his father who had been proud of him, his mother who packed his bento, and wondered where the roiling bitterness and hatred was supposed to be. He considered his brother, who had apparently ‘overcome’ said curse, yet was the perpetrator of such grotesque violence that he’d been the original subject of his revenge, the original demon who lurked in his nightmares, always ready to finish the job.
Now he was just his foolish older brother, the man who threw away the lives of his people for an unworthy cause.
They expected him to want revenge, it was how their prejudice manifested. Except of course he wanted revenge, because the wrong done to him was incalculable. Anyone in his position would want revenge, and if any understanding of history were considered plenty of people in his position did seek revenge. Even in supposed peacetime the hatred and resentment lingered, poised to take their pound of flesh at the slightest bit of plausible deniability. It was why the village was so terrified of a civil war they’d instigated, wasn’t it? The outside threat, looking weak to the other villages they had fought over and over again in the last few decades of bloody conflict.
What a wonderful system not choosing hatred had created, huh? Just let everything fester instead of finding resolution or justice. Truly an impeccable belief.
The thing is, Konoha truly thought it was an impeccable belief to forgive what should never be forgiven. If Sasuke marched into Konoha and explained that he knew everything but chose to forgive they would no-doubt pat him on the back, applaud him for overcoming the curse instead of sneering like Sasuke would in their situation. There was such a thing as respecting your enemies. Sasuke had respected Zabuza, but he hadn’t respected Orochimaru, for differences that should be obvious. If either of them had gone to Konoha and pledged for peace that fucking village would probably have treated them the same, would have forgiven Orochimaru after invading their village and killing their kage in the name of a worthless peace.
He hated them.
But he understood them, knew that Konoha could weather all loss of life, its very foundation built on the corpses of dead children. No, what Konoha couldn’t weather was losing the moral victory, of losing the high ground on which they justify all their atrocities.
So; Sasuke would take that.
The newly-named team Taka weren’t ones for planning, but they needed the plan to be air-tight, not a single lapse that a konoha shinobi could consider ‘irrational.’ This revenge had to be cold and calculated, a contrast to their prejudiced ideas around Uchiha emotion. Let Danzo and the rest of the elders see themselves in how pointed it was, let them taste the cruelty of their version of rationality.
Let them try to object when Sasuke spared their lives, but took the thing that gave their pathetic existence meaning.
“The akatsuki are going to attack Konoha,” Sasuke declared at the gates to Konoha. The guards looked at each other, grimaced, then took him to see the hokage.
He’d been welcomed back with open arms, as much as could be said. Both Itachi and Orochimaru were dead, killed by his hand. Two Konoha missing-nin who’d made a name for themselves and caused irreparable damage to Konoha’s reputation were dealt with and now with both their deaths, and it made sense that Sasuke would return. He had nothing else.
He was still distrusted, still had shadows at his back as he debriefed the hokage on his fight with Itachi and the false story of how his brother, in his final moments, had jeered at him that Konoha would fall like their clan had, that plans were already in motion. It hurt to slander his brother, but Itachi had had no problem destroying his reputation the first time around so Sasuke didn’t dwell. He told the truth; the akatsuki were going to attack Konoha, and Itachi had probably known that. He wondered whether Itachi would have done something about it if Sasuke had been any later.
“Why are you telling us this?” Tsunade eventually asked, her hands steepled in front of her. “Why come back?”
Sakura was there, behind her and to the left. She was watching him, completely tense as she fought with herself. She wanted to be elated, wanted to run to him, but had to control herself as he was still distrusted.
Sasuke eyed the hokage oddly, as if the answer were obvious. “Konoha is my home,” he said. “My brother is dead, my ambition fulfilled. Of course I would come back after I discovered this information. I don’t want anyone to die.”
Liar.
He wasn’t lying. Death wasn’t part of his plan.
“Everyone needs to be evacuated.”
Tsunade shook her head. “We have bunkers. We just need to be prepared.”
“Your bunkers mean shit,” he said plainly. “They have the concentrated destructive power of about a million paper bombs. The bunkers aren’t safe, and neither are the caves in the hokage mountain.”
Grumbles came from around the room, and Sasuke very carefully didn’t look away from the hokage. He wouldn’t meet the elders eyes, knew he wouldn’t be able to control himself.
“Preposterous,” someone scoffed. “He wants us to abandon Konoha.”
“This is our home, we’re not going to just give it up-”
“Your home is about to become a battlefield,” Sasuke spat. “Konoha already has procedure for evacuation. This one would just need to be a little more robust.”
“What are you suggesting?” Tsunade asked quickly, cutting off the budding argument.
Sasuke crossed his arms, feigning thought. “We’d need at least a fifty kilometer breadth to be safe, but considering the untold damage of the attack and how long it would take to repair I believe moving civilians all the way down to Tea country would be safest.”
The uproar of that made Sasuke’s lip curl, and he very deliberately deafened himself to the bullshit going on around him. What mattered was how this reflected on him, how here he was risking his life and freedom by appealing to a village he’d turned his back on to save innocent lives. Right now he had the moral high ground, risking himself for others. Completely in-line with their values.
It took some convincing, but soon enough the hokage made the announcement. It wasn’t an emergency evacuation that the people of Konoha were acquainted with, not the mad dash to bunkers that sometimes left taps on and women with curlers in their hair. Instead it was an order from the hokage printed en mass and sent out with shinobi to every major quadrant of the village, then to every major business, then every major clan, and then individually to every household. Sasuke gave them a week as his tentative estimate, so the hokage gave every household five days to pack and get on the road to Tea country.
Civilians rarely had the luxury of packing before an evacuation and the took wholehearted advantage, gathering essential documents and savings and sentimentals. They packed for an indefinite stay in Tea country, using wheelbarrows and wagons stacked to the brim and tied down with cords and twine. They took their pets, as the danger of falling buildings had not been overstated, and the genin they could spare were working overtime on cat-wrangling.
The village itself moved out important documents and village secrets the second they decided on the evacuation, then focused all of their attention on collecting resources for the trip. They worked with vendors to prepare to store food on the road and helped redirect Konoha imports for the coming month to Tea country. They dug out an old safe and put that on the back of an ox-pulled cart, then put all of the village’s liquid assets within and had a rotating anbu guard. They covered the safe with a wooden crate but any shinobi worth their salt would know it was valuable, and Sasuke snorted at the futility.
There was an official evacuation plan for the fifth day but people were encouraged to leave at their own pace throughout the week to make the evacuation easier. A mixture of shinobi of all ranks were dispatched with every batch of evacuees. People cried, were scared, were angry at being uprooted, but they were all aware of the danger from Orochimaru’s invasion and no one was really upset at being given a grace period to get as far away as they could from a potential battlefield. The idea that Konoha was somehow under so much threat that it was a better decision for the vulnerable population to evacuate instead of huddling behind Konoha’s secure walls lit a fire under their feet, and over half of the village was already evacuated before the scheduled day.
Sasuke, for his part, kept his head down and did what the hokage bid of him with almost too much vigour, trying to dodge his old teammates who wanted to shove themselves into his space like they belonged.
“You did the right thing,” Kakashi praised the few times Sasuke wasn’t fast enough. “You don’t have to hide from us. You came back.”
He was trying to be comforting, trying to rekindle the bond they’d had as a team all those years ago, but all Sasuke could think about was the Uchiha eye lodged in his skull.
“Where’s Naruto?” Sasuke asked instead of engaging in the artificial heart-to-heart.
“He’s away training,” Kakashi replied, shrugging helplessly. “If he knew about all this, if he knew you’d come back, nothing would have stopped him from being here.”
“It’s better that he’s not.”
“I agree.”
He thankfully was never slow enough to have to suffer Sakura’s company. Small mercies.
(Your genin team was bonded for life, wasn’t that what they said? The genin team formed by the village after considering their profile and psychology and skills, after they considered who you were as a person. The village decided who would become friends for life, who would be forced to rely on each other at their most vulnerable. State-sponsored friendships. Manufactured relationships. Emotional manipulation through putting three scared children in traumatic situations and just letting the trauma bond them. The village the village the village-)
On the fifth day the village was evacuated.
“We have a perimeter of jounin around the village wall,” the hokage explained, but it was useless. She was only staying within sight of the village as a symbolic gesture, the bulk of their forces having gone to protect the Konoha civilians. There was nothing of value within Konoha now, no secret jutsu or money or civilian lives to hold over their heads. If the akatsuki attacked now they would just head for the traveling line of Konoha refugees, but they were so widespread that the threat of mass death was all but eliminated. There was no possibility for Konoha to be eradicated.
Or, well, the people at least.
The second Sasuke was dismissed he did not make his way to his outpost, but subtly slipped his team (random jounin) and walked around the wall of Konoha, an excuse ready and on the edge of his lips should he be caught. He had paper bombs, standard-issue for every shinobi, and was very subtly sticking them to trees along the wall, careful that they were far enough away that their explosion wouldn’t hurt the wall. He needed the wall intact. He then caught up to his team.
He didn’t make any moves until team Taka showed up, akastuki robes on all of them along with apologetic grins. The hokage and her guards were in a random section of the forest around konoha, and startled at their sudden appearance, but Karin put her hands up immediately.
“We’re not akatsuki,” she promised, and Juugo elbowed Suigestu until he put his hands up as well. “We’re friends of Sasuke’s.”
“Allies,” Sasuke corrected, but felt his lip twitch at the flush of triumph to Karin’s words, a subtle tell that they’d succeeded on their end.
“From Orochimaru?” Kakashi asked, very deliberately keeping judgement out of his voice.
Both he and Sakura were of the few kept behind to make up Tsunade’s guard, and Sasuke had to fight down a flare of hatred at that. This was the third hokage Kakashi was serving under, the third hokage he seemed to have a personal relationship with. There was no one more entrenched in Konoha than Kakashi, that along with the Uchiha eye made Sasuke’s blood-lust a hard animal to control.
“Yes,” Sasuke shrugged, like it didn’t matter in the least. It didn’t.
“I have this for you,” Karin said, pulling out a small flier folded in half. “I think it’s time you read it.”
The Konoha nin were tense at his back, but allowed him to reach out and take the flier. After all, what harm could a little piece of paper with no chakra put into it do?
The Disgrace of Konohagakure
Sasuke felt his lip curl up, a pleased snarl twisting his face. The story of his people’s demise was there, plainly and in common characters for people of all education levels to read. He hadn’t been the one to write it, hadn’t been able to stomach the idea, but had given the bullet-points to his team and let them craft the narrative with one absolute goal in mind; to disgrace Konoha.
It’s a bit on the nose…
He let himself skim the paragraphs that made up the flier, but didn’t allow himself to dwell on the gruesome depictions of his people’s persecution and demise. The time for mourning would come after this was settled.
He gave the flier to the hokage.
“Where did you find such information?” Sasuke drawled as the hokage read, already stepping back towards his team.
Karin shrugged. “Everywhere, unfortunately. It seems someone distributed such inflammatory words to every major nation. By now the whole shonobi world knows.”
Of course, they’d been the ones to do that. It hadn’t actually been that hard; Orochimaru had the means to make massive amounts of paper copies within one of his hideouts, and an extensive understanding of trade routes all over the shinobi world. A pile of fliers were sent off in every direction with just a bit on intel and a bag of cash for the vendors troubles. Almost too easy.
The hokage’s brow furrowed, then she paled, and then went painfully still. Sakura and her advisor read the flier over her shoulder, only for Sakura to gasp and wrench the flier out of her hands to inspect it.
“There’s no way such a thing is true,” she argued, before stilling as she registered how calm Sasuke’s was. She turned to him, tense like she was near danger. She was. “There’s just no way…”
The flier passed from hand to hand, person to person, and one by one Sasuke saw the subtle shifting of weight, the movements towards weapons.
Kakashi’s eyes dulled as he read it, accepting the potential reality of the words. He then turned sad eyes on to Sasuke, as if he were going down a path from which there is no escape. As if the path of a Konoha shinobi had an escape. As if Kakashi didn’t know that.
Time to drop the act.
“I claim two penalties as reparations for my slaughtered people,” Sasuke announced, and felt team Taka fall in line at his back, squaring off against his enemies. “Two worthless substitutes for the bloody revenge they deserve.”
Oh he felt it. There would be no blood if all went well, but he could taste blood on his tongue nonetheless. Death. He was not slaying his enemies in glorious combat, but he was still killing them. A slow demise. Poison with ink on paper.
“Firstly, for myself, I claim the good name of Konoha.” Sasuke gestured to the flier, now being frantically read over by the anbu who should be silent in the trees. “That flier has been spread throughout the shinobi world. All your clients, all your enemies, and all your allies will know what Konoha has done. Your reputation will be tarnished to the level of the bloody mist in its heyday, a pointless clan culling from an evil regime.”
“There’s no proof,” Tsunade bit out, her fists clenching at her sides. “I don’t know if I even believe it myself.”
“You do,” Sasuke said plainly, “and we both know proof doesn’t matter. You never proved my clan was involved with the kyuubi attack, but you still treated them with suspicion, undermined them, spied on them, and ultimately killed them.”
“I didn’t do anything,” she argued, but Sasuke was having none of that.
“You are the hokage,” he spat. “You swore to bear responsibility for this fucking place, so bear it. Live with your shitty decision.” You fucking wretch.
“S-Sasuke-kun,” Sakura pleaded, her limbs starting to tremble. “This can’t be- this isn’t you.”
He set his eyes on her, and let her see him. Let her see the hatred, let his eyes spin red and blood drip from his eyes, let his killing-intent infect the air with all resolute force of a squall bent for the coast. The thing that had compelled his actions was greater than one boy’s grotesque grief, but a ringing of hundreds of dead souls crying out for justice. He was a vessel for their revenge, his will their own, and nothing could stop an Uchiha bent on vengeance.
“The second thing I claim I do so in the name of the Uchiha,” he declared, too much power in his voice. “I claim the land from this marker to fifty kilometers east. All of the land where the once-named Konohagakure stands.”
That was enough to break the tension, enough for the outrage to peak through and the nin around him to protest.
“He means to take Konoha!”
“Was the akatsuki threat ever real? Was Jiraiya-”
“This fucking pissant-”
Suigetsu snorted. “You idiots should be thanking him. He goes through all this trouble of evacuating everyone before he crushes your pathetic village and this is the reaction? See, I was pro literally poisoning the well-”
“If you truly care about human lives above petty pride,” Sasuke said, cutting off Suigetsu’s tirade, “then you will take this as a blessing.”
Pride was the supposed folly that killed his people, because they were just too proud to take their persecution lying down. As if pride was unique to the Uchiha. As if Konoha didn’t build monuments to their dictators. As if the Uchiha hadn’t live under Senju rule twice, for years, before being undermined so much became an issue. As if their actions in putting aside old grievances and forming Konoha were meaningless, weren’t acts of humility, and Konoha’s continued distrust and disdain not a betrayal of the ideal it pretended to espouse.
I hate I hate I hate you killed them you killed my people the elders the children the babies in their beds you slaughtered them all-
“Konoha is not simply a place where people live,” Tsunade argued, showing remarkable composure to losing her home. “It’s more than that, and it represents more than that.”
“Yes.” Sasuke smiled, as cold as his people’s dead corpses. “And it decided that in order to protect that ideal it needed to murder hundreds.”
How utterly worthless. What was the ideal Konoha was meant to represent again? Peace? It was a fucking ninja village. Cooperation? It oppressed the people who helped build it. Kindness? It barred his people from government because of blood. What did Konoha have to its name that wasn’t undone by all the actions it took to defend such a worthless place?
“You have no bodies to hide behind now,” Sasuke said, jerking his head over his shoulder to the empty village behind him. “To destroy Konoha would be to destroy mere buildings. You can keep your ideals and go elsewhere. All I want is the land.”
He knew it wasn’t that simple. Konoha relied on belief in it to function, on the symbols and, yes, the big giant fuck-off statues of the previous hokage. It may never represent an ideal, but the land was a symbol nonetheless.
(And it would be. For the rest of time.)
Sasuke channeled his chakra and felt the paper bombs ignite before he heard the explosion, and his team was already moving. They could feel the dredges of Konoha at their back; the woman whose face stood tall next to the men who’d killed his clan, the team he’d abandoned for a greater purpose only to see on the side of mass murderers, the faceless anbu who’d stripped themselves of character in order to become the ultimate killing machines. Evil was chasing him, but they wouldn’t catch him.
When the wall of Konoha came into sight so too did the trench surrounding it he’d created with his paper bombs, a burning pile of fallen trees around the massive wall sunken into the dirt. A flare of chakra and a massive pain in his eyes had the same black flames his brother had used against him used against Konoha, joining, then overpowering the orange flames and spreading along the lines of the carved trench. A wall of black flames surrounded Konoha’s walls on all sides save for a small gap, a gap that closed around team Taka and separated them from their pursuers.
“We can’t stop,” Sasuke barked as his team ran up and over the wall. “Kakashi has the mangekyou, though I don’t know how much control he has. We need to hit hard and fast.”
“Oi, we’ve been over this already,” Suigetsu whined. “Let’s just go.”
He knew this village, and he also knew how basic infrastructure worked. He targeted power plants, drums of oil, barrels of gas; all things that were likely to explore and accelerated the spread of his amaterasu. He didn’t have enough chakra to set the whole village alight, but the nature of fire itself was to spread and they didn’t need to use chakra to help that along. He was exhausted as he stood in the middle of the village, his eyes giving him access to every corner to target with black flames, but it was up to his team to help the flames spread. They almost made a game of it; who could spread it the fastest, how thick and tall they could make the flames. Debris was an important part of the burning, as the best way to spread the flames was to pick up a piece of debris by an unburning end and lob it at a reasonably untouched area. Amaterasu wouldn’t go out in the velocity of the throw, so liberally throwing burning objects was the way to go, aiming for wooden support beams and other objects that were quick to burn and thus quick to spread. At one point Suigetsu had been using his sword as a way to safely pick up objects on the blade and then lob them across the quickly blackening village, only to sheepishly approach Sasuke and ask him to remove the flames stuck to his sword. Juugo was just brute-strength throwing things, though direction was done with care, while Karin was using an interesting tactic of throwing shit through the flames with enough speed to go right through them and towards an untouched direction, making sure she never had to even get close.
Sasuke watched the wall.
There was one area in Konoha that would remain untouched, and it was the checkpoint his team ran to when the flames grew too thick. It wasn’t the Uchiha compound, as he had no desire to preserve the place that his people had wanted to be free of, but rather just the Naka shrine. It housed Uchiha culture, was the place where his clan had started to fight back, and more importantly was the shrine Sasuke had prayed at for most of his life. His clan had cared for the Naka shrine for generations, and he simply couldn’t bear to destroy it. It would be the one monument of the previous Konohagakure. Maybe he would rename these ruins for the Naka shrine. That would be appropriate.
“I don’t care how badass your sensei is,” Suigetsu proclaimed, his eyes gleaming as he eyed the village being devoured by flames like the arsonist Sasuke had made him, “there’s no way he can put all of this out.”
No, he wouldn’t be able to. He’d seen some flicker in the flames to the west as Kakashi used his sharingan to combat the flames, but they were simply spreading too quickly. They couldn’t be stopped.
And they weren’t.
Konoha burned for seven days. Banners and posters and advertisements and all things made of paper and string were destroyed first, colorful pictures that attested to the life that lived within these walls gone in seconds. Clothing and textiles made excellent tinder, and laundry lines became lines of fire suspended over the burning city before collapsing, disintegrating in the heat. The inside of buildings burned first, as so many of them had clay exteriors that took longer to burn over their couches and throws and books and television sets. They died from the inside out, a last gasp of breath released from these buildings as they collapsed inward on the second day. By the fourth day the hokage tower fell, and then the village had no more buildings left to stand tall. The last two days were just for destruction, watching that chemical reaction as black clouds choked out the sun and a new carpet of melted debris became a thick blanket over the ruins of Konoha.
It was extremely hot where they stayed huddled within the Naka shrine. It was hot and smoky and they had to keep going out to make sure the flames didn’t spread beyond the boundaries of Konoha to the trees or to the Naka shrine. It was brutal, torturous work that was constantly risking their lives to do. It was unreasonable for them to care so much about the buildings and the roads and all things devoid of life that they’d risk their own.
Sasuke felt like he was breathing for the first time in years.
Fire had a religious aspect to it, he understood. Destruction wasn’t always evil, sometimes it was the exact opposite. Cleansing, letting something unnatural and toxic die to restore the balance of nature. They tended the flames like a farmhand tended fields, with respect for the life captured within that fire and the service it was doing to the world. This village was a blight, a blight that had suffocated his people for years before dealing the final blow and perhaps was doing so on even a larger scale that Sasuke couldn’t concern himself with. He was purifying the area, and watching those black flames consume the place he’d considered home felt right. Like a cremation. The village had been dead a long time, the spirit meant to be imbued within the stone long since dead under the weight of broken ideals and economic pressures. He wasn’t even killing the village, he realized. The village was already dead; he was just simply burning out the rotted corpse so something new could grow.
He gently started to clean up the fire after the seventh day, careful not to overtax his sharingan. Some of the land was now just black; all the grass destroyed and dirt scorched. Most of the land where the buildings had been were now just strange uneven hills of molten metal and rock. Sasuke had excellent recall due to his sharingan, but even he was finding it hard to remember what used to stand in its place. The academy, the hokage tower, the Hyuuga estate, the memorial stone; all of it was gone.
Good riddance.
In the end the only thing that remained that marked this land as Konohagakure were the walls and the hokage mountain. The walls would remain; he needed a perimeter to define the cursed area he had brought to ruin, but the hokage monument…wouldn’t.
(He’d saved the best for last.)
It was the exact same jutsu he’d used against Itachi. The conditions were ideal for it after all the burning, and it felt appropriate. He’d scorched the earth here, it was time the sky had its due.
Unlike the slow destruction of fire, kirin was a single flash of power that heralded destruction. One moment Sasuke was looking at the hokage monument for the last time, admiring the massive, electric blue beast hovering above the stone leaders with abject malice. In the next moment there was a flash of light, and then they were gone. The ones who’d hated his people, who’d killed them, who’d created such a miserable and pathetic waste of a war machine that his brother died a sick young man who’d accomplished nothing in his useless life, were gone.
“Begone with the thunderclap.”
And Konoha was no more.
***
When Pein finally showed up to deal his revenge Sasuke just grinned at the wreckage he found, gesturing vaguely.
“It’s already gone,” he shrugged. “You’re too late.”
“You didn’t kill anyone,” Pein said, his voice completely devoid of emotion. “What kind of revenge is that?”
“I’d have preferred to kill them,” Sasuke acknowledged, “but they would have expected as much.”
“You care about that? You care about their opinion of you?”
Sasuke rolled his eyes. “No, and neither do I care about your opinion of me or my actions.” He made a shooing motion. “Go hunt down your drama elsewhere. There’s nothing here now.”
He hadn’t wanted to play by Konoha’s fake ideas of morality, more just he wanted to rub it in their face that he could play by their rules and still ruin their fucking village.
Pein left soon after, and Sasuke spent his days rearranging rubble and making plans in a notebook. Team Taka was allowed to leave if they wanted, of course. Sasuke’s revenge was complete, and for the first time in his life actually felt complete. Their purpose as a team was fulfilled, but they’d all just shared a look and said they’d stick around for a little while. Sure, he was probably going to get a nasty visit from a few disgruntled Konoha shinobi soon but Sasuke could take them, and it didn’t really mattered if he died now anyways. Well, he’d prefer to die after his newest project was done, but that could take years so he wasn’t holding his breath.
Then Naruto showed up.
He stood tall on a giant toad that had appeared just as suddenly as Naruto, arms crossed and serious as he inspected the rubble around him. He whispered something to the toad perched on one of his shoulders that Sasuke couldn’t hear, but he more than heard the toad’s answer.
“This is Konoha.”
Sasuke wondered how much he’d changed that he felt nothing but a bit of amusement at the horror that slowly revealed itself on Naruto’s face.
“No,” Sasuke corrected, appearing directly in front of the massive Toad. “This is no longer Konohagakure. You’re standing on the memorial site for the Uchiha clan, so unless you’re here to pay respects you need to leave. You’re trespassing.”
He sensed his team in the distance, sensed their frantic approach towards the invaders, but Sasuke wasn’t worried.
“Y-you…” Naruto gasped, his serious expression faltering, his arms uncrossing. “You destroyed the village?”
He said it so starkly, so disbelieving, that the scale of what he’d done hit Sasuke in the face.
“Yes,” he agreed, only a bit disoriented by the reality asserting itself. “I did.”
I did.
They fought, but it was unlike any other fight he’d had with Naruto. It wasn’t charged the way it usually was, this tension between both of their ambitions and their shared history. No, Sasuke had already accomplished his goal, and he honestly didn’t care if he lived or died. Naruto, on the other hand, seemed to finally be feeling a fucking inch of the grief Sasuke had felt his entire life and was fighting as simply an expression of pain, his face twisted up in incomprehensible grief. His eyes were already red.
“You know no one died, right?” Sasuke finally said when they’d gone a few rounds, finding perverse pleasure in seeing the boy who’d always compared them go through the stages of grief. “I evacuated the village before I burned it down. They’re all still alive.”
Even though all of them really shouldn’t be.
“W-wha-” Naruto stuttered, his eyes wild. “You’re lying! They wouldn’t just abandon the village!”
“I mean, I tricked them obviously.”
“You…” Naruto gasped, his tears finally falling “I don’t…”
Sasuke rolled his eyes. “Everyone who lived in this village is still alive. They’re in Tea country. Just head in that direction and I’m sure you’ll find them.”
The hokage’s group had left sometime during the burning, beyond the time where Sasuke himself would have understood the land as lost. He’d honestly expected them to haunt the forest around the previous Konoha, waiting for the flames to abate in order to strike, but maybe one of them actually had decent priorities and voiced the idea that the hokage should be with their people over ruins.
“They’re all still alive,” Sasuke explained. “Sakura, Kakashi, Iruka; they’re all alive.”
“They’re all alive,” Naruto repeated, turning the words over in his mind. After a moment he snarled, wiping at his eyes while he whipped out a free hand to gesture widely. “Then what the fuck are you doing?! What is this all about?!”
“I’ve avenged my murdered clan,” Sasuke said simply, still feeling that rush in his gut at that absolute fact. “I’ve taken the land back that they lived on and destroyed the homes of their oppressors and killers.” He narrowed his eyes. “I met genocide with destruction of property. You should be grateful I didn’t do more.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?! Konoha didn’t do anything!”
Sasuke opened his mouth, then closed it. “How do you not know? Have you been living under a rock the last few days?”
Naruto flushed. “…I’ve been up on a mountain.”
Sasuke rolled his eyes. “Go to Tea country, loser. The people who hate you and the paltry amount who don’t are waiting there.”
Team Taka suddenly appeared at his back, taking advantage of the lapse in combat to get to his side as back-up, though it was much more about a show of force at the moment. Naruto’s eyes widened, taking in his new team with shock until that was overwhelmed with the bitter bite of jealousy.
He left.
***
They’d only just flattened a section of the deceased village, marks of pink paint dividing the flattened section into neat rows when the man who would be king showed up.
“I should have known,” Danzo spat, standing on top of the wall surrounding the ruins. “A loyal Uchiha only happens once a century.”
Sasuke hummed. “More like a traitor only happens once a century.” Because despite how much he still loved his brother, that was what he’d been.
Danzo didn’t waste time any more time with words, and neither did Sasuke.
He wondered how this fight would have gone had he just gone directly for Danzo like his bloodlust had demanded of him, while Danzo still had a strong village at his back and the conviction that he would win. It would have been sweet, but so much of that fight would have been tethered to the triumph of his people that Sasuke could already see how he’d be desperate, how he’d have fought like a dying man. Now he’d already won, and to win or lose this fight meant nothing. He could kill Danzo and win, or Danzo could kill him and he’d still win. What an excellent feeling.
“I don’t know what you’re so mad over,” Sasuke mocked, simply dodging. “Everyone in Konoha survived. You suffered no losses. You got off easy.”
Danzo lunged, his eyes maddened. This man wasn’t the idealist, he knew. He wasn’t the one who even pretended to have morals, more concerned with the tangible issues towards Konoha’s success. There were probably people within the displaced village who were conflicted, who truly thought Sasuke had given them a second chance to rid themselves of a tarnished reputation and re-establish themselves elsewhere, that he’d granted them mercy. Danzo knew that wasn’t the case, knew that the kind of blow Sasuke had dealt was not the kind they could just recover from. They didn’t have infrastructure to rely on anymore, no buildings to house them and civilian business to sustain them. They didn’t have a marketable reputation with potential clients anymore, their clout sullied like that of the bloody mist. And they didn’t have their symbols and paraphernalia to feed their beliefs; no hokage mountain, no academy, no memorial stone. Without these pillars the unshakeable belief in Konoha has been shaken, and even if they recover it will never be to their former glory.
Sasuke hadn’t just killed them. He’d destroyed them.
And Danzo knew it.
Now Danzo was the one with madness in his eyes, the one who fought for vengeance because he’d lost something unrecoverable, and Sasuke was the one with a twitching lip and a triumph that cannot be undone.
Then Danzo showed Sasuke the sharingan on his arm - and the fight changed.
Two minutes later Sasuke was holding Danzo’s severed head in his hands, delicately removing his beloved cousin’s eye from the socket.
They had a funeral for the eyes removed from Danzo’s corpse, using amaterasu’s black flames once more. He held it in front of the Naka shrine, the closest thing to home, and prayed as the eyes were devoured, prayed that using the black flames meant his people would find rest like night, like sleep. Amaterasu wasn’t from this world; Sasuke had to summon it. Maybe there was a place for them in the afterlife, a place where they could just be themselves and love each other next to the roaring black flames that had purged them from a world that hated them. There was a place for them; there had to be.
Danzo’s body was sealed in a scroll and sent towards Tea country in the talons of a hawk. Unlike those immoral fucking bastards that used and discarded Uchiha bodies, Sasuke knew to respect the dead. They would give Danzo a proper funeral, and maybe they’d also get the message that Sasuke was powerful and not about to give up the land without a fight.
(And maybe, just maybe, they’d see the empty holes poked out of Danzo’s corpse, out of his eye socket, and know what he’d done. Know it was always true. Know the depth of betrayal and cruelty done to his people and for once in their pathetic lives extend compassion to his people and feel the shame they’d misplaced.)
Sasuke went back to work.
***
It took five years to finish the Uchiha memorial. Five years of clearing away debris, of flattening out the ground, of using Orochimaru’s obscene resources to hire contractors and import the materials he needed. The entire floor of the village had been raised a meter from where the original land had been due to the flattening, and there were stairs at the entrance to the memorial you had to climb to reach the gates that had once been guarded by Konoha nin. Now the entrance only had an Uchiwa subtly carved into the stone above the gate and a sign marking it as The Uchiha Memorial.
He’d favoured black stone during the construction, polished marble tile that had licks of white like the black flames of amaterasu, and the entire village was now covered with the stone in neat meter-by-meter tiles. There were pathways for navigation, benches, lamp posts, breaks in the tiles for flowers and other plants to keep his clan company. There were even maps dotted along the main path. It was all very sleek and austere and intimidating, but lovely nonetheless.
Off the main paths in neat, even rows were the graves. Unlike any normal cemetery the headstones were massive, obelisks that stretched high above his head, almost the same height as the walls surrounding the memorial site. They were thicker than Sasuke’s wingspan, and built so solidly no harsh weather or time could tear them down. Better yet, within every single headstone was a piece of the hokage monument, the legacy of the previous kage completely disappeared within the tragedy of the Uchiha clan, their cursed village now only the foundation for their cemetery.
He’d gotten the names from records held within the Naka shrine, and made sure to keep families together. No one got preferential treatment, all the headstones were the same size and sleek black marble, but he did keep his own family at the back of the memorial site. His father’s name stood group next to his mother’s, and there was blank headstone next to them for when Sasuke would eventually pass. His brother didn’t have a headstone as Sasuke thought it would be enormously disrespectful to include the man who’d killed them all in their memorial, but Sasuke had a private shrine for him within the Naka shrine, only accessible to him. He was not neglected.
Team Taka built a small home outside of the walls of the Uchiha memorial, but Suigetsu left after the work was done. He was right, they’d had a few scuffles with the previous regime over the years and he’d definitely needed their help, but after five years and seeing what Sasuke had chosen to do with the land, well, it was considered bad taste to try to reclaim the land. He’d truly succeeded in disgracing Konoha, and the only way for the pitiful dredges of the once-mighty village to earn contracts was to acknowledge the cruelty under the previous regimes but distance themselves from their actions. It meant attacking Sasuke was tacitly endorsing the massacre of his people, and to do that would ruin their reputation even more. They couldn’t afford to do it.
Juugo and Karin stayed, though Karin was often coming and going. Usually it was just Sasuke and Juugo; sweeping and polishing the tiles, dusting the headstones, tending the flowers. Juugo had been more content in the years where the fighting had been sparse and their days were more dominated by construction projects. His entire team had actually seemed to get just a bit better, even Suigetsu even though he’d left for bigger and badder fights. He didn’t know if they’d grown to genuinely care for the people who’d they’d avenged or if they just relished the fact they triumphed over a ninja village, but all of them seemed just a bit more content. Sasuke was grateful, after they’d done so much for him.
Then they had their first visitor.
“Konoha isn’t here anymore,” Sasuke explained to the old man in the bamboo hat. He’d had a few civilians over the years who hadn’t gotten the message that Konoha was gone who’d he’d had to turn away, so he was used to handling it.
“I know,” the old man said, startling him. “I’m here to pay respects.”
He…had obviously made the memorial site as a place for people to pay respects, and he’d modeled it off of other sites that made it welcoming to the idea, but he’d never really expected a stranger to take him up on it.
“Why?” Sasuke couldn’t help but ask. He knew his people were feared countries over, knew they had been isolated and even before held themselves apart from people. He just…wanted to know.
The man regarded him levelly. “An Uchiha saved my life twenty years ago. I never forgot that, and I’d like to pay respects.”
Sasuke pursed his lips, held himself tense at the gates.
“Do you have any loyalty to Konoha?”
The man shook his head. “I’m from Ame.”
Oh. So definitely no loyalty.
Sasuke nodded, and opened the gates wide.
***
There was a small trickle of visitors in the early years of the Uchiha memorial, but Sasuke knew the memorial was a spectacular piece of craftsmanship on its own, so soon enough they had more foot traffic. He couldn’t tell who was coming because they had a genuine connection with the Uchiha clan and who was coming just to see the massive headstones and beautiful carved stone, but he didn’t discriminate. There were no hotels and the nearest village was quite a few hours walk away, so usually they either came in the morning and spent the day only to leave at night, picnicking on top of the mountain overlooking the memorial that used to be the hokage monument, or they brought camping gear and pitched a tent outside the boundaries of the memorial so they didn’t have to make such a trek all at once. Juugo was unnerved at the people, nervous at being around those he could potentially hurt, but he was still a good person. He kept his distance at first but soon enough he trusted himself for a few interactions, and then after than he was playing with the kids and acting as a pseudo-tour guide. It was so ridiculous, but Sasuke didn’t call him out on it.
Everyone was allowed inside the memorial as long as they minded their manners and treated his people with respect.
Everyone except Konoha nin. There was a sign plastered out front that said exactly that.
Sasuke spent a lot of his days caring for the Naka shrine, as any visitor they had made it a point to visit and pray. It became his haunt, and Juugo often said the shrine was the place where their visitors could find Sasuke. He had quite a few people who wanted to see him, though not as much who wanted to talk once they actually met him. Still, sometimes people had questions. They wanted to know what he thought about whatever bullshit the people who were once-Konoha were up to, his side to the story of the Uchiha persecution, how he’d been able to do what he’d done. He didn’t usually reply, but sometimes they caught him on a good day and he let himself speak. It was strange having people who cared about his thoughts, who wanted to know his feelings for their own sake. Sort of nice.
One novel experience was when a priest visited, the old man bald and genial. He visited Sasuke’s shrine, and made it clear it was Sasuke’s shrine.
“You obviously have great love for this shrine,” the oji-san said, nodding kindly. “I’m sure the Naka river is pleased.”
He treated Sasuke with the utmost respect, but he also taught him some rituals for caring for a shrine Sasuke hadn’t known about. He felt honoured to receive the information because the man was right; he loved this shrine. It held his people’s history, his brother’s tombstone, the god his people had worshipped. Of course he loved it. When the oji-san was done teaching him he simply pat Sasuke’s arm.
“You perform the duties of a priest,” he informed him, “and you have the values of one. It would not be improper to call yourself the priest of this shrine.”
Sasuke had protested, because priests weren’t just people like him. He’d tended the shrine because there was no one else and, well, someone had to. But apparently the belief that someone had to was enough.
One year after that Naruto showed up.
Sasuke had sensed his chakra from far off, Naruto making no move to conceal it. He met the boy at the gates, something he hadn’t done in years. He was alone, a basket full of offerings clutched in his hands, and was looking at Sasuke with insecurity, nervously shifting from foot to foot.
“I’m, um, here to pay respects.”
“Why?” Sasuke challenged. “You’ve never cared before.”
Naruto exhaled roughly, scratching at his head. “Doesn’t mean I can’t care now, does it?”
Sasuke jerked his chin, his eyes catching on the hitai-ate tied around Naruto’s head. “If you care then strike a line through your hitai-ate. No Konoha nin is allowed in here.”
Naruto grimaced, awkwardly wringing his hands. “I can’t.”
“Then you can’t come in.”
“Sasuke, there are threats in this world that are bigger than the village. The akatsuki-”
“I don’t care,” Sasuke spat. “You could save the world a million times over and you would still not be welcome here with that headband on.”
“I can’t just-!” Naruto cut himself off, collecting his temper. “I can’t just cast them aside. It’s more complicated than that.”
“I don’t care,” Sasuke said again. “You’re trespassing. Please leave.”
“Sasuke-”
“Leave.”
Naruto looked hurt, but the dull disinterest on Sasuke’s face hammered home he wouldn’t be changing his mind. Naruto swallowed and nodded, then placed the basket of offerings on the ground in front of him, clapped his hands as if in prayer, and left.
Asshole.
“You okay?” Juugo asked, appearing next to him.
Sasuke just hummed.
If…if Naruto came back because he cut off ties with Konoha then…then that would be okay. He would let him in.
He wondered where he would go. Would he wander the rows of headstones, admiring the craftsmanship of the architects Sasuke had hired like the people who had no ties to his clan did? Would he take Juugo’s tour? Or would he go directly to Sasuke’s shrine, taking in the few Uchiha artifacts on display and pray to their little river god. Would he give those offerings he’d brought to the shrine, or would he perhaps give it to his parents, probably the only Uchiha Naruto would even remotely care about. Sasuke didn’t know, but he did know he wouldn’t be getting in with loyalty to the regime that killed them.
But…if this was finally enough to break Naruto’s loyalty, well, Sasuke could think of no better revenge.
***
One day a carpenter was invited into the shrine with the honoured duty of carving the name Uchiha Sasuke into the only blank headstone, and then the memorial was complete. An Uzumaki took over the duties of the Naka shrine, but people didn’t know how they were associated with the previous old priest. The Uzumaki did their duties with respect and oversaw the entire memorial, until such time that they passed it on to someone else. And then them onto another, and then another.
The Uchiha memorial was a wonder of the world, a marvel that those from lands over came to see. It stood tall well beyond the time of villages, and there came a time when visitors needed to take a class to contextualize the events that led up to the obscene Uchiha massacre. It was a landmark, a place of honour, and the spirituality of the place was never lost to time. There was a presence there, more than just the single spirit of the old Uchiha priest, long gone. No, there was a combined spirit there, and a message for those who cared to listen. This memorial, a place of grief, was often actually a place for joy, and everyone who paid their respects often felt like they understood.
The Uchiha were at peace.