Crazier than a bag of Cats
The thing about Uchiha Sasuke, is that he is complicated. Well, most people are, but perhaps not in the same way as Sasuke.
Quite a few people would say he wasn’t complex; he was just crazier than a bag of cats. At twelve.
But the thing is, while a lot of people watch him like a ticking time bomb, waiting for him to let that crazy out messily and violently, very very few of them seem to know why he is as he is.
You see, once upon a time, Uchiha Sasuke was a very happy, well-adjusted child. For being born to a ninja family, in a very traditional clan, in the main line, Uchiha Sasuke was a very normal child. He loved his family, he had friends, he played games, had a favorite food. Anyone who saw him at eight years old would not recognize him at twelve.
But that’s what happens when you experience trauma.
For Sasuke had loved one person above any and all, even his own parents; his brother. He had adored his elder brother who always has a kind word, a soft smile, a moment of time. In a family that was busy, in a family that was held to a high public standard, smiles and soft hugs weren’t always normal. But Sasuke’s brother had made sure he grew up loved and made sure he knew it.
Sasuke had loved him unguardedly and with his whole heart.
And then Itachi had broken that poor little heart.
Itachi had murdered everyone with even the faintest trace of Uchiha blood, down to the youngest infant, except for Sasuke. He’d murdered them with dead eyes and a cold sword and made Sasuke watch as he beheaded their parents. And then he’d taken his poor little brother and made him relive it over and over and over and over again for 72 hours.
See the thing was, people assumed the trauma was from seeing the Uchiha die, in seeing his family murdered. But in reality, it not the murders, as horrible as they were, it was who did them. If it had been done by any other hand Sasuke would have been hurt, would have suffered, but he would not have been shattered.
Sasuke loved his older brother irrevocably and utterly, even when he was murdering everyone he had ever known. But when Itachi had left him alive, left him with crushing words of ‘weak’, something inside of Sasuke cracked. Because Itachi’s was the only opinion that had ever really mattered to Sasuke.
All children need something to measure themselves against, something to compare themselves with. They need another person to judge their own actions as good or bad, right or wrong. And with the crime committed, Itachi spit in Sasuke’s face and told him he was not good enough.
To a child who had strived for a soft smile, a word of praise, a hug. To a child who had strived for recognition from one person, being told he was so worthless he was not worth of even death was something that tore. Sasuke was told he was nothing, less than, that there he was less than human. Worth less than even a babe who could do naught but cry.
In that moment he had his psyche shattered, his sense of self destroyed, and his sense of worth obliterated.
So of course Sasuke was crazy. In that moment he couldn’t even consider himself human.
Perhaps he could have been fixed, could have been saved, but the actions of a few well-meaning people ruined that nearly days after the attack. Those who could have stopped it, unknown to Sasuke, had been the behind the orders that led to this moment.
So they kept Sasuke in the hospital until he was physically fine. They gave him a psychiatric assessment, deemed him broken, but in a ninja village that was normal and not something they cared to put much effort into fixing. So they patted him on the head, told him they were sorry, and put him right back in the center of the murder scene thinking maybe being at home would help.
Oh they had cleaned out the bodies and the scrubbed off the blood, but they hadn’t gotten rid of everything that held memory. They had not taken any of Itachi’s things. They had left all the reminders.
And so, Uchiha Sasuke, utterly alone, sat in his house rocking back and forth and gibbered his way further and further into insanity.
When someone finally came by to force him to go back to the academy, they thought the strong arm approach would be best and simply ordered him to do so. Sasuke was far enough gone to obey, but it simply enforced the madness. It enforced the idea that Sasuke did not matter. He had was not allowed time to process or grieve simply told to pick himself up and obey.
So Sasuke went back to the academy a month after the massacre. And what he found were children who could not grasp grief, could not grasp the magnitude of destruction to him, could not grasp madness. They bleated empty platitudes that hit him like lashes and a day later it was like nothing in the world had changed. They further enforced the idea that Sasuke was worthless, not even worth grief or care.
Oh there were the odd people who still gave him pitying looks and soft words, but they did nothing else. And actions speak louder than words. So Sasuke started to change. Of course the madness had changed him immediately, but there had still been traces of the old Sasuke if anyone had cared to pick of the pieces and glue them back together.
Instead no one did and Sasuke was left to do it himself. But trembling hands and tear filled eyes and screams ringing in your ears did very little to help with such a careful process. When no one acknowledged the changes or his efforts he simply accepted that no one cared and started to work that in.
So Sasuke did what he could, human instincts to survive pushing him on, and became a dark quiet child. He did his best at school, worked hard because some instinct pushed him to try and prove himself, to reach desperately for someone to acknowledge that he was a person. He simply got remarks about how it was expected of an Uchiha to be the best. This did nothing to help because now they were talking of his family again, pushing every one of his individual successes onto his dead family as if Sasuke had not worked hard for them on his own. Sasuke kept hearing how they glanced over him as a person to talk of his family, as if he was not worth the mention.
The girls around him swooned and cooed and called him cute and mysterious and cool and Sasuke was screaming inside of his head. They talked about how handsome he was and Sasuke realized they wanted nothing but what he appeared to be. They did not care for Sasuke, they cared for his name, for his dead family, and for his pretty face. They cared nothing for the small boy in his head screaming and screaming and screaming.
So Sasuke broke, little by little over the years, until every time he tried to put himself together he crumbled like a house of cards.
Upper level shinobi would pass him with careful wary eyes and the civilians treated him like a shadow of his dead family and Sasuke sunk deeper and deeper into the madness. And all people said was that was expected. That Sasuke was fated for it.
Uchiha Sasuke merely gibbered. He had lost his sense of self so long ago that the idea of fighting what people said he was, was impossible.
It’s no wonder he is crazier than a bag of cats.