Sasuke is seven when he walks to the cliffs surrounding the Naka River, stones in his pockets.
He is seven and he knows that there is no honor in suicide. He is seven and he doesn't care. It is raining and the world is cold and everyone he has ever known or loved is dead and gone.
He had burned them himself. Had dragged the bodies to the center of the clan compound, had tried to make his weak katon jutsu strong enough to cremate them as custom dictated. He was only a young son of Amaterasu. A burning of this size would have required several full grown Uchiha. Not one boy barely into his Academy years.
But Sasuke is alone.
The shinobi that invaded the compound after the horror had tried to stop him. Had tried to drag him away from the corpses and convince him that it would be enough to let the state handle the burials, that they would do a job befitting the Uchiha. Sasuke hadn't listened. A few of them had moved to stop him, but a white haired ANBU in a wolf mask put up his fist to stop his squadron.
He let Sasuke exhaust himself moving every body he could handle dragging to the center of the compound. Watched as he retched until he threw up nothing but water and bile. Stood impassive as he only managed to scrape up enough shallow flame to scorch the hair and the clothes, to crack and bubble the skin, but not enough to cut through fat and lick the bone.
When wakes up after losing consciousness from chakra exhaustion, he's in the hospital. And he can see the pyre of smoke from the Uchiha compound. He wonders if it was the white haired ANBU who fed his flame, or if some heathen who didn't follow Amaterasu's ways had burned them. He prays it's the former. He doesn't know what he would do if his family couldn't make it to the sun because the wrong person's flame tried to guide them there.
People who weren't born Uchiha, their katon jutsu didn't know the way to heaven.
Sasuke doesn't know it either. One thing he's sure of is that he won't find it at the bottom of the river. But there doesn't seem to be another option.
In the old days, his mother would tell him as she ran her fingers through his hair, Uchiha who were traitors to their clan would be drowned. The clan would drag them to the sea, far away from Fire Country. And that journey would symbolize the way this traitor was being cast away from the warmth of the hearth fire, and how they would never find their way back to it again.
They would have their hands and eyes burned beyond repair to destroy their ability to form jutsu, and ruin their Sharingan if they had one. They would fill the traitor's pockets with stones. And then the clan head would row a little boat as far out to see as they saw fit, and they would dump the traitor into the water.
A watery death was the worst thing an Uchiha could bear. Amaterasu's light could not penetrate the ocean deep. No fire could burn there.
Sasuke cannot get to the ocean. He knows he could not get there, even if he tried. He knows he is being watched, even now. He knows he will probably be fished out of the river, or caught by the arm of an ANBU shinobi before he even breaks the surface with his forehead.
Still.
The Uchiha had settled near the Naka in case they ever had another traitor in their midst. When Uchiha Madara defected in his attempts to destroy the village, his illegitimate sister and de-facto clan head, Uchiha Nadeshiko had assured the elders that she would have him drowned. But Senju Hashirama had killed him first.
Sasuke thinks he deserves this. Thinks he earned it. He didn't even try to fight his - fight Ita - the traitor. Sasuke had begged him instead. Had tried to reason with him. Even as they both stood over their parents' bodies, still warm as they bled. Sasuke had tried to talk it out.
If his forebearers had stumbled upon such a situation, they would have fought tooth and claw to kill such a traitor on the spot. The clan was everything to the Uchiha. Nothing came before family. Nothing.
Even if it meant his own certain death, custom dictated that Sasuke was supposed to fight. He was supposed to fight and die. He was supposed to earn his place on the Uchiha pyre with his mother and his father and his cousins and uncles and aunties and grandparents.
But he didn't. Instead, Sasuke had screamed. Had cried. Had done nothing.
The stones in his pockets are ones from his grandmother's garden. From near the stoops of the houses he had to walk past to get to the river. He grabbed them at random, and hoped that picking up a good combination of pebbles and stones would fill his pockets enough to carry him down.
He filled his practice shuriken pouch with them, too, and the weigh tis heavy on his hip. His legs hurt, and his pants are being dragged down about an inch around his skinny hips, but they're shinobi grade so they hold on. They'll hold him down, too.
He doesn't think before he jumps. Doesn't run to the edge of the cliff. Doesn't take a deep breath. He just walks up to the edge, and then he walks off.
Sasuke flies. Sasuke falls. And the water - The water is so cold.
He wakes to a bird pecking at his face. He lurches up, hacks out fresh water, soaked to the bone. The bird squawks and leaps back, feathers rustled in unhappiness. It stares at Sasuke. Sasuke stares back at it.
A crow. His mother had summoned crows. So had the traitor.
His face turns red with the weight of what he feels and somehow cannot name, and he digs his fists into his pockets where the stones failed him. He hurls the pebbles that are left at the bird. Handfuls and handfuls until the thing screeches in its own rage, and takes wing to the sky.
It leaves Sasuke alone. And alone, at the swell of the Naka River, wondering why he was unfortunate enough to survive, Sasuke cries.