Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

He’s here again. There’s a great murmuring out in the compound streets, many whispers and just as many accusations, that reach all the way to his window. For a long moment, Sasuke closes his eyes and ignores it. It’ll fade soon, he knows. It always does.

Except five minutes go by, and the murmurs are growing angry and louder, and Sasuke can hear a high-pitched whistle like a boiling kettle left on the fire.

With an irritated sigh, he snaps his book shut.

“Sasuke,” his mother calls, worriedly, when he stalks past her in the corridor. “Aren’t you working on your homework?”

“I can’t focus with the noise,” Sasuke tells her, trying to bite back his irritation. Despite his best efforts, it bleeds into his tone anyway, and his mother winces slightly. He pauses, and looks at her, “Sorry, mother. I did not mean to snap. It’s not your fault.”

Mikoto bites her lip, and goes to say something. Mika, one of the too many cats on the compound, chooses this moment to come barreling down the corridor, hissing and batting at her.

“Oh dear,” Mikoto murmurs, and drifts away so as not to upset Mika more.

Sasuke takes advantage of that, and leaves the house quickly. He knows his mother means well, that she doesn’t want him dealing with the noise, with everyone else. He gets it – sometimes, his clan is overwhelming and intense in ways that others aren’t, and Sasuke is only ten years old. He has seen a lot, but he’s only human, and he gets nightmares.

Mikoto just does her best to protect him. Her best, unfortunately, isn’t as good as it used to be.

It’s a short walk to the commotion, shorter than it should be. Sasuke frowns. Usually, when he drops by, he doesn’t venture very far in, and leaves quickly after, chased away by the Uchihas that see him coming.

Sasuke doesn’t know what changed, today of all days.

He gets nearer to the crowd, trying to stay unseen as he assesses the situation. There’s a great many people there, and more are coming, all of them making a blockade to ward off the intruder. There are cats, too, watching warily from the roofs, hissing but not daring to come near.

“You shouldn’t be here!” Someone shouts, heard over all the murmurs and the ear-piercing whistle.

“Why do you even come?” Someone else demands.

“Leave!” A third screams.

The cry starts a crowd movement, and suddenly many are wailing it, an otherworldly chant of leave, leave, leave ! Sasuke slaps his hands over his ears, grimacing, and keeps walking nearer. He’s pretty sure he can hear Great Uncle Kagami, always louder and clearer than many in the clan, but his voice is drowned out by the demands and the wailing.

Sasuke tries to get closer, only to get a burst of static in the face.

His patience snaps.

“That’s enough! ” He shouts.

He’s angry enough that his voice comes out loud and sharper than usual. Silence falls like a weight on the crowd, as all of them turn as a single unit towards him. Red eyes, spinning and spinning and spinning, everywhere he turns. It should be a comforting, familiar sight, but at the moment it only makes him sneer, a bad reminder of worse days.

Sasuke ignores them, ignores the way they watch him cautiously. He usually is much kinder to his family, calmer. But it has been a long day, he still has homework, and he can’t focus properly past the headache building behind his eyes.

So he walks forward, and the crowd parts easily in front of him, until he’s standing in front of the intruder and Great Uncle Kagami.

“You are trespassing,” he informs the intruder sharply. “Usually, I overlook it because you do not linger. What has changed?”

For a long moment, the man stares at him, eyes wide and red. Red like the sharingan, and yet nothing like it. Were he in a better mood, Sasuke might find it ironic.

“You can see me,” Senju Tobirama says, more a statement than a question, incredulous all the same.

“Obviously,” Sasuke bites out. “I can also hear perfectly fine, and you all -” he turns his gaze onto the crowd, most having the grace to look slightly sheepish or apologetic- “Are being loud and distracting. I have homework.”

A chorus of apologies starts around him, thousands of whispers that grate in his ears and make his brain buzz. Sasuke keeps from grimacing, instead staring at the intruder.

“He shouldn’t be here,” someone says over his shoulder, a hissed accusation.

“Murderer,” someone agrees.

“His fault,” another says.

“I said enough !” Sasuke snaps, and they all fall back to the usual, barely audible whispers. He turns back to the Senju, and bites out, “State your purpose, and leave. Or stay silent and leave, as you wish.”

“Do you know who I am?” The Nidaime asks.

“I am not blind,” Sasuke tells him. “I also have no patience left, and very little respect for people that show me none.”

The crowd around him finds itself suddenly a little more distant, giving him a bigger berth. Sasuke appreciates it, even though a part of him regrets the reaction.

“You-” Senju Tobirama starts, and then shakes his head, thinking better of whatever he would have said. “I only wished to see if you were in good health.”

“Why?” Sasuke asks. “You are not of my clan, not of my family.”

“You are a boy who lives alone in an empty compound,” he says.

“Evidently not so alone or empty,” Sasuke can’t help but say with dry bitterness, gesturing to the crowd.

“Ah,” a measure of humour crosses the man’s face, “Evidently not. I did not know that, however. I suppose it is comforting.”

Sasuke stares at this man. At the face that he has seen many times in his life, in books and more importantly, carved on the mountain. He looks different in person. He acts different in person.

Sasuke wonders if he’s here because he feels guilty – then decides it doesn’t matter, and he does not want to know.

“Is that all?” He asks.

“It is,” Senju says, after a beat. “I will take my leave.”

“Please do,” Sasuke agrees. And then, because his mother did not raise an impolite host, he bows his head, albeit not as low as a Hokage deserves, and says, “Have a safe journey out, Nidaime-sama.”

Senju Tobirama watches him for a beat, and then inclines his head right back. It’s a gesture of respect that Sasuke didn’t expect, given that he bowed so short. From the whispers that start all over again around him, neither did anyone in the clan.

Only Great Uncle Kagami does not looks surprised. He looks sad, though.

“I will escort you back, sensei,” he says, and nods goodbye to Sasuke.

Sasuke nods back, and turns around. He doesn’t want to waste time watching them leave. He also doesn’t want to intrude.

Besides, there’s still a crowd.

A very displeased looking crowd.

“You shouldn’t be so nice to that man,” a voice calls from the mass of shapeless figures. “He doesn’t deserve our respect.”

“He was Hokage,” Sasuke reminds them. “He founded the police.”

“Trapped us,” someone jeers.

“Doomed us,” someone else hisses.

“He was Danzo’s teacher,” another voice adds, more hatefully, with static to it.

“Maybe,” Sasuke says, already all too done with this mess. “But Itachi was one of us. And the coup was our own decision.”

That shuts them all up. Mentions of Itachi, of the clan’s self-destruction, no matter how orchestrated, always do. Reminders that most of the people that still haunt the compound are there because of the clan’s own mistakes aren’t well-received – mostly because it’s a painful truth. Sasuke closes his eyes, breathes for a beat, then starts walking home.

There’s grief in his heart, heavy and bitter, and a headache pounding behind his eyes.

He still has homework to do.

Perhaps his mother could help.

Knowing the dead and their blunt, horrifying honesty probably has spoiled Sasuke a little for the living. He finds, when he bothers to look around at his social circle, that he doesn’t really have friends. Of the living kind, that is.

Living friends come with the danger of having to explain why he often stares into air or why he sometimes talks to himself. So much of his behaviour probably isn’t normal, and only the fact that he doesn’t have friends saves him from having to explain why he sometimes cringes at nothing, or has violent mood swings.

Sasuke can’t imagine what sort of excuses he’d come up with, but they’d probably be terrible.

The downside of living mostly with the dead and their lack of empathy for all living troubles such as nuanced communication, is that Sasuke has grown to be a terrible liar.

Thankfully, his lack of a proper living social circle makes it easy to hide his reaction to the floating people surrounding him in class. No one really pays any attention to his reactions.

There are three different ghosts at his desk today, and none of them are helping Sasuke focus on the lesson that Iruka-sensei is trying to teach them. Of course, they do not care much about that. If there’s one thing everyone in his life agrees on, it’s that everything is built on lies, especially history of villages.

The kunoichi that is sitting on his desk doesn’t look very impressed with what she’s hearing, that’s for sure.

“That’s not how the Second War went,” she tells Sasuke. “I would know, I was there.”

“War is hell,” the other shinobi there agrees. He looks younger than her, not by much, and his uniform is more recent, “You are lucky, kid, to be born to peace.”

Sasuke gives him the glare that this comment deserves, and the man has the grace to wince at his own faux-pas. Sasuke ignores him, and turns back to the kunoichi. She’s the one with the stories, he can tell, and if the dead are so set on making him lose focus, then they can make it up to him.

The woman grins, sharp and grim, and starts telling him about the political nightmare and all-around hell that was the Second War.

It is, Sasuke has to admit, highly more gruesome than what Iruka-sensei is telling the others. It’s also highly more interesting.

Neither of the other two ghosts say anything up until the moment where she mentions Uzushio. There’s a burst of static, and Sasuke turns to watch the third ghost. He’s not sure if they still have a face, because it’s hidden behind a colourful mask depicting a mockingly joyful face. They do, however, have a lot of red hair, with bells and ribbons woven into it.

“Something wrong?” The kunoichi asks warily.

“Konoha left Uzushio to rot,” the masked one says, voice distorted into a high moan, like wind howling.

The kunoichi’s face does something complicated, but she doesn’t reply to that. She doesn’t look like she disagrees nor agrees. The other nin is slowly backing away. A wise move, all things told. Masked ghosts, no matter what, are dangerous.

Sasuke isn’t wise, and living with the dead has taught him that there are many things to learn, and many secrets to spill.

“Tell me about it?” He requests politely, in a quiet breath.

For a long moment, his only reply is a scratching noise, like a cat clawing at wood. Then the mask turns to him, with a thousand bell chimes.

There are eyes, there, Sasuke can see. Purple, glowing and inhuman.

He stares back.

The mask starts to talk.

Seeing the dead isn’t as much a burden as people would think.

Not that Sasuke knows what people would think of seeing ghosts, but that’s neither here nor there.

The thing is, he wasn’t born like that. He remembers, with perfect clarity, waking up and seeing ghosts for the first time. He also remembers the many breakdowns he had after that, because incidentally it happened the day after the massacre. As far as he and the clan can guess, when Itachi put him in Tsukyomi, it made something in Sasuke’s head come loose.

Or perhaps in his soul.

Sometimes, on bad days, Sasuke thinks morbidly that he was supposed to die on that day, and that some part of him will never forget that. He has one foot in the grave, and so he can see the dead.

It’s a curse, for all the distractions that the dead offer, for the sleepless nights, for the many whispers, the headaches and the secrets that they spill like ink on a blank paper.

It’s a blessing, too, because Sasuke would have gone mad if he had been alone in the compound, with no family, and a lie told by his brother eating at his brain.

He can see ghosts, which means he still has family. Still has Shisui, and all the aunts and uncles and cousins and distant relatives he didn’t even know before. Still has mother, her kind smile and her knowledge. Still has father, as well, although Fugaku stays distant most days, wallowing in regrets and things that make the air around him terribly cold.

Sasuke is glad, selfishly, for that small mercy.

He could have lived without the ghost drama, though.

“It wasn’t his fault!” Great Uncle Kagami is shouting somewhere outside, probably at Aunt Himiko – she’s a sharp, bitter one, always up for an argument.

“He paved the way to our demise!” Aunt Himiko – it is her screeching voice that Sasuke hears – shouts back. “He has never held any love or respect for us, and Konoha only followed his example!”

Sasuke sighs, at the same time his mother and father do. Fugaku is there for dinner, for once, sitting across from Mikoto. Shisui, who is not subtly listening in to the outside argument, is sitting as well. Three feet in the air, his head right next to the open window.

If Sasuke hadn’t seen Great Uncle Kagami at his most mischievous and annoying, he would wonder how he and Shisui could be related. Drama queens and gossips, the both of them.

“What got Himiko going, this time?” Fugaku asks with a long-suffering expression.

“I don’t know,” Mikoto says.

Sasuke’s mother does not really follow the dead-clan gossip, he knows. Most of her time is spent at home, or with him. She likes to wander the city and beyond, when she can. Some days, she looks like she’s searching for something. Some days, she might find it, because she comes home in a better mood than usual.

Sasuke thinks that if he didn’t still need her, if he wasn’t her son, alone and without any living relative nearby, she would be traveling around and enjoying some sort of vacation.

Then again, she wouldn’t be around in the first place, if he didn’t exist, because the regret that ties her to this place is very much related to Sasuke’s existence.

Shisui, because apparently he can multitask and eavesdrop on two conversation at the same time, drifts back to them to enlighten them.

“The Nidaime dropped by again, sooner today,” he tells them. “Didn’t linger when grandfather met with him, though.”

“Ah,” Sasuke nods.

That makes sense. The Nidaime is a controversial figure in the Uchiha compound, and many that still roam the streets dislike him heavily. They blame him, partly, for their demise.

Sasuke thinks that this game of laying the blame is exhausting.

The clan is to blame, and Danzo is, and Itachi is, and the Sandaime is, and the Nidaime is, and Madara is…

Sasuke wishes they would stop trying to point fingers.

Himiko shouts something else, outside, her voice rising in a screech that bursts into static half-way through, and Sasuke sighs. He turns to Shisui.

“I’m not telling her to shut up,” his cousin says, eyeing him warily. “She might just find a way to kill me again.”

“Shisui, if I have to leave my meal to cool while I deal with Himiko, I will be in a very foul mood for the rest of the evening,” Sasuke warns him.

Shisui, not as much of a fool as he plays, drifts off to relay his threat to Himiko and Great Uncle Kagami. Father stares at Sasuke from the other end of the table, and Sasuke stares back, trying to find something in his lined face.

When only silence remains, Sasuke sighs and goes back to eating. He’s no cook, but with his mother’s help he’s getting better. Today’s dinner is almost as good as hers were.

“I’m sorry, son,” Fugaku eventually says.

“What for?” Sasuke asks, not looking up from his plate.

“I should have done better,” Fugaku says.

Better as what, Sasuke wonders. Clan head? Father? Person? Who knows. He looks at his father, and sees his regret, stark on his pale face.

He doesn’t look down, not wanting to see any stain on his chest.

“You did your best,” Sasuke says, after a beat. “It was not enough, no, but you tried. It matters.”

Fugaku doesn’t reply, but there’s a slight tension that isn’t there in his shoulders anymore. Mikoto also looks a bit happier. Sasuke will take it.

His clan is the result of many circumstances and bad choices. His parents are the same, product of their environment.

Sasuke loves them all, all the same.

If seeing ghosts is good for something, other than learning historically accurate stories, it’s to keep watch.

No one but Sasuke sees or hears them, and nothing can stop them.

“Hey kid,” a ghost – an Inuzuka woman, whose name he doesn’t recall – waves at him from the eaves of a nearby building as he shops. He glances up, makes it curious and bored, like looking at the sky, or perhaps at a bird, nothing more. She grins, feral and amused, and tells him, “Got a trail on you. Heads up.”

Sasuke hums, thoughtful – as if recalling a shopping list maybe – and looks back at the shop window. If he nods ever so slightly, well, only the ghost of the Inuzuka woman will ever know.

He hears her laugh, bright and amused, and keeps going.

Today is one of the days the Hokage or Danzo decide to keep an eye on him, it seems. It’s not all that rare – Sasuke is the last loyal Uchiha, after all, and they need to make sure he stays that way, safe and pliant. It’s annoying, however, because it means that he won’t be able to interact with anyone he cares about until the Anbu on him leaves.

Sometimes, that takes days.

But well. At least, it’s not Danzo himself.

“He’s at your five, in that tree,” the Inuzuka tells him, drifting lazily in the corner of his vision. She grins when he shoots her a quick look, and says, “Inuzuka Kegawa, by the way. Nice to meet you.”

Sasuke nods, makes it look like he’s checking his pockets. Kegawa laughs brightly again.

“I like your style, kid,” she tells him with amusement. “Nothing fazes you much, does it?”

Sasuke glances at her, safe in the knowledge that the Anbu agent that is trailing him is at his back, and arches a brow. Really , he wants to say.

“Yeah, okay, I suppose that’s fair,” Kegawa grins. “I’d be hardcore too, if I could see the dead parading around.” A second eyebrow lifted, and she snickers. “Yeah, yeah, I meant when I was alive , smart ass!”

Well, at least she doesn’t need a translator to his many facial twitches like some ghosts do when he has a trail on him. Some of them seem to expect that he could communicate with them on a complex scale even with an Anbu following, without anyone noticing.

Sometimes, the dead are just as stupid as the living.

“Ah,” Kegawa says, eyes darting up. “At your three, now.” She hums, and comments, “His technique isn’t all that good. Anbu agents sure have let themselves go in times of peace, huh? Sloppy.”

Sasuke rolls his shoulders in a shrug that looks like he’s trying to ease a muscle pain. He wouldn’t know, he’s not yet good enough to spot Anbu, let alone be at their level. Besides, he has no clue how good they were during the wars.

Kegawa, still drifting in front of him, shrugs right back.

“I know, I know, just saying,” she says. “I had a sister in Anbu. She could sneak up on you wearing a dress made of bells. Fucking gave me a heart attack or two in my life, too.”

That’s a funny image, and Sasuke has to duck his head to hide his twitching lips in his collar. Kegawa sees it anyway, and grins at him.

“One time,” she says, “We tried to take her by surprise…”

As she keeps him entertained with her funny stories of her sister, Sasuke relaxes and almost manages to forget about the annoyance he feels about being followed by an Anbu.

Seeing ghosts isn’t so bad, really.

Sasuke senses the man coming down the street long before he actually sees him.

Or rather, he hears the commotion.

Shimura Danzo may be a quiet, stoic sort of man, the suite of ghosts that follow him are anything but. There are a few of his victims permanently with him, screeching his secrets and his crimes to the wind, filling the air with static and angry wails.

Always worse than that, though, are the others .

Sasuke sees one, always so very small, flickering like a bad light, barely there at all, and feels the blood retreating from his face. Tastes bile, at the back of his throat. With a quick, hurried and frantic look around, he makes sure that no one is paying attention to him. Then, before it can get worse, he ducks for the nearest way out.

It’s easy enough to slip away from the main street where he was shopping, and to hide between two shops in a back-alley without anyone noticing or questioning it. Sasuke curls up against the wall, and tries to keep his lunch inside. The only person with him at the moment is Shisui, dead and floating next to him, a grimace on his face.

The way his eyes flicker between sharingan red, black, and bloody empty eye-sockets is the only real evidence that he is as disturbed as Sasuke is.

“Are you alright?” His cousin asks Sasuke, staring at him with those fake eyes.

“Is he gone?” Sasuke questions instead.

“Soon,” Shisui replies, glancing back to the entrance of the alley. There’s high-pitched shrieking, and a lot of static coming from that direction, and he winces, as does Sasuke. Shisui grimaces again, “Damn, that never gets better.”

Sasuke has half a mind of asking him what he means by that. Is it facing Shimura Danzo himself, or is it what follows him around that is hard on his cousin?

He doesn’t ask, though, because he suspects that just like for him, it’s a bit of both that has Shisui so shaken.

“Is Takeda still poking him?” Sasuke asks, mostly to try and distract himself.

“Yep,” Shisui says, and his face flickers only once more before starting to stabilize again. He looks at the street, and grins. “Aunt Akaina looks mighty pleased with herself, too. She’s coming this way.”

Sasuke looks up, and tries for a wobbly smile when he sees the woman drift towards them. She does look pleased.

Sasuke steadily ignores the few faceless figures that have curiously drifted after Akaina, pale, small wraiths that have a human shape and little else. Truthfully, some have very little at all, not even shapes, barely impressions of something that was once human. Some of them are flickering, making it hard for Sasuke to not look at them, but he manages. Focuses on Shisui, on Aunt Akaina.

“What did you do this time?” Shisui asks with vindictive anticipation. “Spilled his tea on an important file?”

“Don’t be ridiculous, boy, I don’t have the strength for that yet,” Akaina sniffs. She smirks, and it’s just as malicious as Danzo deserves, “No, I made a draft just as he had finished organizing his paperwork in a neat pile. Spilled all on the floor. He had to start over again.”

“Oh no,” Shisui says, and it’s probably supposed to be mock-sympathetic but he’s grinning too wide for it to be anywhere near believable. “How awful.”

“Truly terrible,” Sasuke pipes up flatly, but he can’t hide the spiteful twitch of his lips either, for all that he sounds bland.

One of the others has drifted closer yet, and Sasuke tries not to look. Tries very, very hard, because the sight of that blank, empty face-

Sasuke dry-heaves, and immediately Shisui is there, soothing him. Aunt Akaina is shooing the others away, but Sasuke can’t hear her, can’t focus beyond the angry buzz of her voice. She’s probably trying to reason with them, to tell them can’t you see you’re upsetting him -

Sasuke doesn’t know why she tries. The others don’t understand emotions. They don’t even know who they are. They’re just after images of people, and even then not quite.

The only reason they even leave a trace is because loyalty was so ingrained in them that they can’t imagine straying.

“Come on, Sasuke, breathe,” Shisui tells him, gentle, his hand making a cool draft against his back that sinks comfortingly into his skin. “That’s it.”

Sasuke tries to say something, but chokes on it, chokes on his breath and on the static that still comes from the main street. He wants to tell Shisui that he’s sorry, that he should be more well-put together.

How is he even going to kill Danzo, if every time the guy comes near, Sasuke is reduced to helpless mess?

Shisui makes a helpless, amused noise, and Sasuke realizes a bit too late that he might have succeeded in saying that last part aloud.

“You have time, little cousin,” Shisui tells him, and keeps rubbing his mist-hand into Sasuke’s back. “Remember what Aunt Mikoto said.”

“I know,” Sasuke manages, barely refrains from rolling his eyes.

When he learned – from Shisui, mostly, and then bits and pieces from others in the clan that made for a gruesome large picture – what Danzo had done, he’d been furious. Had wanted- he doesn’t know, doesn’t quite remember what he wanted. Just that he never had felt such rage as the anger he felt when he learned that his brother obeyed an order.

Even to this day, Sasuke isn’t quite sure if he was more angry at Danzo or at Itachi for that.

Still, only one of the two was in Konoha, so Sasuke had grabbed his kunai, determined to find the old murderer and gut him .

His mother, always wise and gentle, had stopped him with one stern word and a look.

“Sasuke, really,” she had said once he had put the kunai down and sat in front of her. Her hands had been cold and breezy in his hair. She had hummed, and added simply, “Make jounin first. Then kill him.”

“Make jounin first,” Sasuke echoes softly, the familiar goal helping him ground himself again.

“Kill the bastard then ,” Shisui finishes for him, with a smile that is a touch too wide.

Sasuke smiles back, even though it’s not much of a smile. Bares his teeth, and gets a laugh out of both his cousin and his watching aunt.

Danzo better be watching his back. Because when the time comes…

Not even the others will save him from the Uchiha’s wrath.

There’s a girl in front of the compound doors, dithering there, looking sad. She’s been there for a moment now, watching and not moving, worrying her lower lip with her teeth.

Sasuke doesn’t even think about it, before he approaches her. They’re inside the compound. There’s no one watching, except for a few restless cats. He’s curious.

“Can I help you?” He asks.

The girl jumps with a burst of static, her whole shape shuddering for a moment, before she solidifies again and turns a startled gaze on him. She’s young, with a sweet face, and there’s a hole in her chest the size of a bowl.

“You can see me,” the girl says. When Sasuke nods, she smiles at him, a very sweet smile. A very sad one, “I was told you could.”

Sasuke blinks. Ghosts in Konoha pass on that information, sometimes, for the dead with small regrets that can be easily fixed. Or for the dead with stories. Sometimes, just to pass on secrets and truths, like ghosts like to do.

He wonders which one she is.

“Can I help you?” He reiterates.

“No, I don’t think so,” she says, and for a blink there’s a trickle of blood on her lips. “I was searching for a friend. But he’s not here.”

“An Uchiha?” Sasuke asks, even if it seems logical. Very few ghosts in the compound aren’t from the clan. And there’s no one living here, besides him.

She nods. Her eyes are growing distant, and her shape flickers again. Like ink touched with water, her colours seem to fade, leaving her a wan after image.

“I’m not sure why I thought he’d be here,” she tells him. “He never liked this place, even if-” She trails off, and her smile goes thin. “Well. No matter. I suppose I’ll have to look elsewhere.”

She shakes her head, and static bursts, framing her with stark lines like brush strokes. She looks suddenly more vibrant, colourful, browns and purples and red spilling all over her pretty pink apron-skirt.

Powerful, Sasuke thinks, feeling the static like sparks on his skin. Dangerous, too, to have made her death such an integral part of her identity that she’s wearing it so obviously. Most ghosts like to hide the marks and wounds that caused their death in the first place, when they can help it.

Even so, he can’t help but ask.

“Have you been searching long? For your friend?”

“He died before I did,” she says simply, and that’s not an answer except it is in a way.

Sasuke can guess she’s been looking for her friend since she died. He wonders when that was – she looks young, but ghosts don’t age. Maybe she’s been searching for centuries.

“You know,” Sasuke says, and tries for sympathetic but it ends up probably sounding very blunt, “Some people do not leave ghosts.”

“I know,” she says, simply. “Maybe he didn’t.” She smiles again. “I like to think he had no regrets, and that’s why I can’t find him. I just don’t think that’s true.”

She would know better than him, so Sasuke just nods. For a second, the wind picks up. The trees on the edge of the compound rustle with it, and it drifts past Sasuke, a cold draft on his cheeks not unlike a ghost touch.

The girl’s hair doesn’t move at all, and neither does she. Stuck between planes, like every other inhabitant in the compound.

Maybe that’s what happened to her friend. Maybe he’s stuck somewhere.

“Maybe he’s lost,” he tells her. “That happens, too.”

She looks at him, silent for a beat. Her eyes are sad, but her gaze is straight when she nods.

“That would be like him,” she says. “Thank you.”

Sasuke nods back, and with a last smile, she drifts away, leaving the compound.

Chapter Text

The Uzumaki woman is there again.

Sasuke eyes her warily from his seat near the window, hoping not to attract her attention.

Uzushio ghosts, while having a lot of incredible stories to tell, are also the most dangerous. They are often masked – but even when not, they carry a power that tastes like salt in his throat and chimes like bells in his mind. Their wills defy death itself, and for that alone Sasuke both respects and fears them.

This woman is no exception. She’s constantly buzzing with a miasma that Sasuke has never seen in any other ghost, growling like fire and rage. With the fox mask on her face, and the way her blood-red hair tends to flare like flames when she gets most angry, she looks a lot like he imagines the Kyuubi no Kitsune would if he was given a human shape as a ghost.

Accordingly, Sasuke has decided from the first second he spotted her that if he’s unfortunate enough to attract her attention, he’s going to be very, very careful.

The woman isn’t actually the Kyuubi, though. The red hair, the mask, and the bells hanging to the side of her face are enough clues that she’s Uzushio first and foremost.

Then there’s the fact that she’s been following Uzumaki Naruto for almost a week straight now, and well…

Sasuke can put two and two together.

He wonders, though, why it took so long for Naruto’s mother to come back to him. Maybe she got lost, like some ghosts do when they feel too much. Maybe she had other people to watch over.

Maybe it’s something else entirely, but frankly Sasuke is not going to ask.

Since it’s been several days now, and the Uzumaki woman has yet to pay any mind to anything that isn’t her son, he even has a little hope that he might be able to fly under her radar.

Up until the moment she suddenly gets up, and starts pacing angrily around the desks.

Sasuke tenses up. Naruto’s mother or not, she’s a masked Uzushio ghost and an angry one. Any form of agitation from her is bad news. Mizuki-sensei is saying something about chakra control and chakra nature, but Sasuke isn’t paying him any true attention.

The Uzumaki ghost is pacing in circles, like a large predator prowling the edge of their territory. Naruto is in the exact center of those circles, and truly, even a moron could guess that the ghost is trying to protect him from something .

What, Sasuke has no clue.

What he does know, however, is that suddenly the ghost catches sight of him, and everything goes still.

Sasuke stares back, helpless. There are deeply glowing red eyes staring at him from the mask’s eye-holes, and he feels like they’re staring into his very soul.

A blink, and suddenly the woman is in his face, the miasma that usually pours from her held at bay by some miracle. A bell chimes. The mask vanishes into nothing.

Blue eyes, darker than Naruto’s sky blue, peer at him with wonder and sadness and something terribly deep and dark like grief.

“Sasuke-kun,” the woman whispers, and it’s nothing like the fire growls of before, instead more like the sound of steps on a summer day.

It takes effort, a lot of them, for Sasuke not to flinch. She knows his name. How?

“You’ve grown so much, Mikoto-chan must be very proud,” the woman goes on, and this time Sasuke can’t help it.

“You know my mother?” He asks, a quiet hiss that gets drowned by the drone of Mizuki-sensei’s lecturing them on something he already, likely knows.

The woman goes still again, and for a flicker of a beat, for the chime of a bell, the mask is back and so are the red eyes. But then it’s gone, and her expression is one that Sasuke can’t name, won’t name, too intense for living eyes.

“You can see me,” she blurts out, sounding astonished. And then, expression slowly morphing into something gleeful, “You can see me!”

Sasuke has the very sudden and ominous feeling that just he made a grievous mistake.

Uzumaki Kushina trails behind Sasuke like an eager puppy, as he walks home from school.

The other ghosts greet him from afar, giving them more space than usual. Sasuke isn’t sure if it’s the way Kushina is bouncing that is putting them off, or if it’s the fact that she’s an Uzushio ghost. If he had the choice, Sasuke would like to give Kushina space too – but she seems intent on staying right by him, chattering excitedly about seeing Mikoto again.

Sasuke… doesn’t know what to make of that, to be honest. The idea that his mother and Naruto ’s mother knew each other, were even friends… Well. It’s odd.

Fortunately, Kushina at least understands that he can’t reply to her incessant chatter. It gives Sasuke the freedom to stay silent all the way home, mind still reeling with new information.

“Oh,” Kushina says, the moment they get into the compound.

The doors fall close behind them, and Sasuke carefully doesn’t look at her face. He’s afraid of what he’ll find if he does – a mask, or something worse. He can see her form flicker with red in the corner of his eyes, the earlier miasma back with an edge of sharp grief that Sasuke doesn’t know what to make of.

It’s been years now, three of them, since anyone showed grief for his family that wasn’t poorly disguised pity.

It’s odd.

“Are you-” Kushina starts, and struggles to finish. “I mean. You’re not the only one that is, living, you know?”

Sasuke looks up at her, finally, and finds that the mask isn’t there. There isn’t anything horrific either. Simply raw sadness, almost too intense for the eye.

He looks away, and shrugs.

“My brother,” he says, and it grates to say it, but it’s true, “Is alive.”

“Itachi-chan, yes, I remember him,” Kushina says. There’s an almost smile in her voice now, “He takes good care of you?”

And oh, isn’t that painful to hear.

“You haven’t been in Konoha long, have you,” Sasuke says.

“No, barely more than a week, I was-” Kushina trails off, and says a bit sheepishly. “Preoccupied? I didn’t pay much attention to anything else than Naruto, you know?”

Sasuke nods, keeps walking. A few cats hiss at them from the walls, one of them even jumping off to flee.

“Yeah. There’s been a lot of things happening since you died,” Sasuke says, and somehow it doesn’t get stuck in his throat. He doesn’t even know when she died, but he can guess it was years before the massacre. There’s no easy way to say it, but he does, “Itachi, he’s the one that killed everyone.”

Kushina stops dead, eyes wide.

Sasuke shrugs again, and keeps walking. The ghosts around them greet him distantly, all of them peering curiously or warily at Kushina. Like the cats, they do not approach. Sasuke greets them back, by name when he can, and keeps moving.

Kushina looks back at them, something new in her eyes. Something burning.

Ominously, she doesn’t say anything else for the whole way to Sasuke’s home.

It takes Kushina barely a second after they reach Sasuke’s home and find his mother in the living room, to throw herself at Mikoto.

Sasuke sees his mother’s eyes widen with shock and disbelief, and then she returns the hug with a fierce, fierce joy that shines bright and ethereal. He should look away, probably, because there’s always something wrong with seeing so much sadness and happiness in a face that cannot shed tears, but he can’t. She’s smiling so widely, and it’s radiant.

It’s funny, how Sasuke can’t recall his mother ever looking so happy. Not when she was alive, and certainly not since she died. 

It’s funny. Except it really isn’t.

“Kushina,” Mikoto breathes.

She finally steps away, but Kushina’s hair clings to her. It looks like a spill of blood on her chest, and Sasuke has to look away.

“I’ll start on dinner,” he tells his mother, turning towards the kitchen.

“Of course,” she replies, distractedly, and then he hears her say, “I’ve been searching for you.”

“I was lost, Mikoto, so lost,” Kushina replies. “Uzushio is so, so bright. It took me time to find my way back.”

“I thought you might have been there, but I never could go,” Mikoto replies softly.

Their conversation becomes a buzz in the background, words spilling and spilling and overflowing until Sasuke is drowning in them. He can’t not listen, because he’s curious and he wants the truth, even if the truth has teeth and chokes him.

That’s how his father finds him, cutting tomatoes with an unfocused look on his face, Kushina and Mikoto’s voices coming from the living room like snakes to hiss at him.

“Ah, she’s here,” Fugaku says, and Sasuke turns to look at him, glad for the distraction. Mikoto has been telling Kushina of the coup, of the massacre, and there’s only so much he can bear to listen to again. “I thought she’d never return.”

“You knew her?” Sasuke asks, cautiously.

For a moment, he thinks he made his father retreat into one of his pensive moods, silent and brooding. Then, slowly, Fugaku nods. There’s something pinched, but resigned in his expression.

“She was a very dear friend of your mother,” Fugaku tells him, matter of fact, “And her husband a very dear friend of mine, for all that we didn’t always agree on things.”

Sasuke opens his mouth to ask more, when Kushina suddenly storms up to them. Her hair is whirling again, and the mask is there again, flickering in and out of reality with alarming frequency. 

“I cannot believe you could be so stupid -” Kushina starts, her voice deepening in a snarl that is too feral to be human.

“Kushina,” Fugaku cuts her off, calm but solid, in a way that Sasuke barely remembers from years ago. “You never change. Still so loud.”

The mask disappears again. There’s a beat of silence, and then Kushina cocks a hip with pursed lips.

“And you are still so boring,” she says. Grins, full of teeth and sharp, “Guess being dead couldn’t help with you being stiff .”

Fugaku’s expression pinches, and Kushina barks out a laugh like a thousand bells clattering on the floor. She turns away in a whirl of red, stalking back to Mikoto.

Sasuke thinks he catches the barest twitch of a smile around the corners of his father’s mouth.

“Come, son,” Fugaku beckons him, and drifts to the living room, where Kushina’s voice is loud again, but without as much anger as before.

Obediently, Sasuke grabs his dinner with him, and follows to the table. Shisui, he notes absently, is conspicuous by his absence. Some spirit or another probably warned him of Kushina’s presence.

That, or he has gone to bother Great Uncle Kagami again.

Sasuke sits by the table, silent, and observes.

The dead, Sasuke has long learned, spill secrets on dinner tables like they would the latest civilian gossip. Kushina is no exception to this, for all that she burns so intensely. Her death is nothing more than an irritant to her, and it shows in the careless way she tells them about it.

By the end of it, Sasuke’s food tastes like ashes in his mouth, and he wonders a bit numbly if Naruto knows anything about his parents or if he ignores the enormity of his own existence.

Does he know he has the blood of legends, and a demon in his belly? Does he know his mother is fire and blood and was an Uzushio fox before she even held the Kyuubi? Does he know his father is looking at him from the mountain, with stone eyes and nothing more?

Sasuke isn’t sure it’s all real. Naruto is blond hair, blue eyes, loud and obnoxious and stupid. Very much alive, and very much normal in many ways.

Connecting him, the dead last, that one kid from class that always plays pranks, with so many dangerous truths isn’t easy.

He’s still reeling with all of that information when Kushina leaves. She seems more solid, more stable now, but when she announces that she needs to go back, to watch over Naruto, her eyes glow red with furious flames.

“It’s not like anyone else is doing the job properly,” she growls.

“I try, sometimes, but-” Mikoto starts, and falls silent again, lips thin.

Kushina barks a dissonant laugh, and for an instant her eyes go blue again as she favours Sasuke’s mother with a thin smile.

“We’re dead,” she says, and that’s all that needs to be said really. “Even if Minato wasn’t stuck in the death god’s stomach, he wouldn’t be able to do more than us.” She shakes her head. “It’s not your job, besides, Mikoto-chan. I should have been here sooner.”

“You’re here now,” Mikoto says, a small comfort in the face of everything else.

“Yeah,” Kushina agrees nonetheless. She smiles a toothy, scary smile. “I’m here.”

As she leaves, Sasuke stares after her, watching as her aura darkens and flows as she drifts away, mask flickering over her features.

He’s not sure what to make of all of this.

Shisui’s house – technically Great Uncle Kagami’s house first – is possibly one of Sasuke’s favourite places to train.

It used to be his house, and the backyard that led to the woods on the edge of the compound. But every time he goes there, nowadays, Sasuke half expects to see his brother perched in a tree – alive or dead, he’s not sure.

Great Uncle Kagami understands that, even though he never asked about it. Sasuke suspects that Shisui told him. He doesn’t mind.

Neither of them mind that he uses the house to train either.

“What good is the house, if it sits empty?” Shisui says when asked why.

“It’s not empty, though,” Sasuke points out, because Great Uncle Kagami lives there still, as does Shisui on the days he’s not at Sasuke’s house.

“Not in a certain sense, no,” Shisui agrees, wryly, “But it still gathers the dust.”

“Then clean it up,” Sasuke says. “If Aunt Akaina can create drafts to blow paperwork off tables, you and Great Uncle Kagami can blow the dust out of the house as well.”

Shisui lets out a surprised snicker, flickering sharply two feet to his left and then back in place with a small whirlwind. Sasuke raises a vindicated brow, but it just makes his cousin snicker more.

“Aunt Akaina is something else,” Shisui says, once he’s calmed down enough to stop himself from erratically flickering all over the path. “I’ve never made a draft intentionally.”

“Well that’s your problem, isn’t it,” Sasuke sniffs.

Shisui starts snickering again, and Sasuke can’t quite hide a small, pleased smile. Shisui has been in an odd mood lately. It’s good to see him laugh again – even if it means he’s just appearing randomly everywhere.

It also means his cousin might agree to help him train, too, and Sasuke is looking forward to that. 

His mother has been helping, a lot. Being dead means that that nerve damage that once prevented her from staying an active shinobi doesn’t bother her anymore. It also means that when Sasuke asks her, when she’s available, she’s always delighted to accompany him to Shisui’s house to give him pointers.

Since Kushina has come back, though, she’s has less time for it. Sasuke doesn’t mind too much, though, and he can’t blame her for wanting to spend time with her friend.

It’s not like she’s the only ghost around that he can ask for help.

Shisui and Sasuke head to the back garden to start, only to pause when they find that the place is already occupied. Great Uncle Kagami pauses mid-gesture, a half-smile freezing on his face when he sees them. His guest turns, then pauses when he realizes who is there.

“Ah,” Senju Tobirama says, and nods slowly in greeting, “it seems I overstayed my welcome.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, sensei,” Kagami immediately retorts, rolling his eyes. “Sasuke doesn’t mind you being here.”

He pauses, eyes meeting Sasuke’s, and Sasuke shrugs a bit awkwardly. He remembers the last time he saw the man, the first time he ever spoke to him.

This time there’s no angry mob to reign in, and no homework to finish with a growing migraine. It’s a definite improvement.

“I don’t care,” he agrees with Kagami. Suddenly realizes he’s being a tad rude, and adds, with a respectful bow, “You are of course welcome here, Nidaime-sama.”

As long as no one else notices and takes exception , he adds wryly to the safety of his mind.

“Thank you,” the man says, eyeing him curiously.

“You were here to train?” Great Uncle Kagami asks. When Sasuke nods, he shrugs, “Try not to fling kunai at us, then, and we’ll be good.”

“I’m not seven anymore, Uncle,” Sasuke grunts, and gets a distracted smile and a hand wave as a reply.

Huffing, Sasuke waves back and directs himself towards the spot where he usually trains. With a squawk, Shisui follows him. He’s dripping cold water with each indecisive step.

Sasuke sighs, and asks him for pointers with his katas. He might not really need it, since his mother has been drilling him for weeks on them, but it does the job. Shisui finally manages to focus and forget about Great Uncle Kagami’s guest, and thus stops leaving translucent puddles in the grass.

It’s easy, once they get started, to get lost in the familiar repetition. Sasuke lets his muscle memory do the job for him, even as he breathes, slowly and deeply, to relax a little. Shisui does give him a few pointers, correcting his feet placement by a hair and pointing out the few times it still looks like he’s overreaching.

“You’re doing good,” he says, once Sasuke has done his katas sufficiently, “Has Aunt Mikoto talked about teaching you another style?”

“She mentioned it,” Sasuke nods, taking the time to stretch. “But she says I’m still too young to learn hers.”

“You are a bit short,” Shisui says, nodding wisely.

He yelps when Sasuke launches himself at him, and then barks out a laugh while avoiding a glancing blow. Sasuke has to roll away from him, and Shisui grins at him, toothy, eyes a bloody void.

He makes a ‘come hither’ gesture, and Sasuke needs no more prompting to grin right back and throw himself right back at Shisui, whipping a kunai out from a pouch to lead.

Shisui, of course, is always the better one of them both, and easily weaves out of his reach each time, while leaving glancing touches. Sasuke feels them acutely, cold spots like getting touched by an ice cube, and corrects his stance accordingly.

It’s always difficult, sparring against ghosts. There’s no way he can use his opponent’s blows and strength against them, no way he can use them for purchase either. Traps do not work, and many grappling moves are all but useless.

Of course, Shisui – and most of his ghostly sparring partners – is always good about reacting like a living, solid person would. Mimicking pain, faltering here and there, and completely stopping if what Sasuke does should have worked.

It’s still not the same, and Shisui cheats a little.

“Oh, come on!” Sasuke cries when his cousin lets himself sink into the ground to avoid a fireball followed by several shurikens.

“Some jutsus do that too,” Shisui claims sweetly, even as he flies out of the ground to try and grab him in a chokehold. Sasuke evades it just barely, and kicks back – which Shisui evades by flickering away. “Earth jutsus, mostly.”

“You told me yourself that you were terrible with earth!” Sasuke complains, and just barely manages a clumsy kawarimi out of range of Shisui’s next attack.

“Yeah, well, not like I can use fire jutsus, can I?” Shisui drawls, and flickers right behind him, ice cold fingers numbing Sasuke’s throat. “Dead.”

Sasuke sighs, and slumps to the ground with an annoyed grunt.

“Still cheating,” he complains.

“Shinobi cheat all the time,” Shisui shrugs, and crouches over him. “You good?”

Sasuke makes an affirmative nod. He’s just a bit out of breath. Forcing himself to stop when he should, so that he doesn’t go through Shisui while sparring is more tiring than it seems. Shisui doesn’t know that, because Shisui is dead and forgets that people get tired for the smallest thing.

It’s not like ghosts sleep. Or need to, really.

Overhead, the trees are swaying and rustling softly. The sky is grey with clouds, and Sasuke dearly hopes it won’t rain. He would hate to have to cut his training time short. Of course, he could train inside Shisui’s house, that’s what he’s done several time before, but… He doesn’t like to do so if he can avoid it.

Shisui, and every other sparring partner of his, may not leave a single mark on the polished wooden panels, and on the walls and floors, but Sasuke does even when he’s careful.

Besides, he thinks, turning his head to peer at the porch overseeing the garden. Uncle Kagami is still there, and next to him the Nidaime. A black, familiar figure and a strange, white wraith, watching him and Shisui sparring while they talk together in quiet tones that the wind doesn’t quite hide. They look comfortable there.

Sasuke doesn’t want to bother them by bringing the spar closer to them.

“Okay,” Sasuke says, turning away from the twin red gazes fixed on him, and to his cousin’s empty one. “Let’s go again.”

Shisui’s smile promises nothing but suffering, but that’s okay.

Sasuke needs to get better if he wants to make Jounin one day.

Kushina positively ambushes Sasuke the moment he gets back home from the Academy.

The only reason Sasuke doesn’t do something stupid when he sees a flash of red all but pouncing on him, is because he’s used to Shisui’s brand of insanity. He simply side-steps her, and then watches warily as she turns around with a manic look in her eyes.

“What?” He asks defensively.

“You need to talk to Naruto!” She immediately tells him, eyes burning with fervor. “I can’t keep doing this- he knows nothing!”

Sasuke knows, full well, what kind of idiot Naruto is, but he doubts that’s what she means. He also doubts it’d be appreciated if he mentioned it.

“What?” He says instead, slowly.

“Talk to him,” Kushina repeats, shoving herself into his space and making him flinch back. “Someone needs to tell him everything!”

Oh. Oh no. Sasuke takes a step back.

“What?” He says again, his voice flat.

“He doesn’t know who I am!” Kushina explodes, her hair flaring up like a bloody flag. “He doesn’t know who Minato is! He doesn’t know he has the Kyuubi- that I did before him- that I died for him- that I loved him!”

She pauses, as if to take a breath, even though she hardly needs to. It’s a terrible pause, a silence that punches Sasuke all the more painfully when her next words are barely a whisper.

“I love him, and he doesn’t know,” Kushina says. She looks at him, dark blue eyes meeting his own, “He’s so lonely, Sasuke-kun.”

There’s something lodged in his throat, and Sasuke has to look away. Makes a show of bending, and removing his shoes. He swallows, painfully, but still he feels choked under her gaze.

I’m lonely too , he wants to say, but that wouldn’t be fair.

For all that he lives with ghosts, as cruel as it is, he has his family still. He sees and talks to his mother, has dinner with her and his father and his cousin. Can visit his aunts and uncles. He knows all that they want him to know. Knows they love him. Knows they’re here.

Naruto doesn’t.

And that’s not fair, it’s all but fair, but-

“What do you expect me to do about that?” He asks, not facing her.

“Tell him!” Kushina says.

Sasuke frowns, something uneasy churning in his gut. He shakes his head mutely, and grabs his bag, fallen when she ambushed him.

“Sasuke-kun!” Kushina calls after him, drifting right behind with a chime of bells. “Please! He needs someone to talk to, to be his friend-”

“I’m not that someone,” Sasuke retorts shortly.

He’s not. He’s not even social , can’t even talk to his teachers without feeling awkward and out of place. The living bother him. He’s pretty sure his very existence bothers them too.

Naruto, for one, is pretty vocal about that. His dislike of Sasuke is known.

“You could be,” Kushina insists. “You’re a good-”

Sasuke shakes his head again, interrupting her. He can’t. He’s not friend material. He has no idea how to be.

“No,” he says. Adds, sharply, “You just want me to communicate with him for you.”

Kushina doesn’t reply immediately, which is a confession in itself. She drifts next to him, red red red in the corner of his eye.

“Is that so wrong?” She asks, softly. She takes a deep breath and adds louder, more forceful, “If you don’t want to be his friend, fine, but you could just tell him-”

“No,” Sasuke cuts her off before she can tell him what she’d like passed on. He shakes his head, quick and urgent, “No.”

Kushina makes a noise, somewhere between offense and surprise, but Sasuke doesn’t care. He quickly goes into the living room, and breathes a sigh of relief when he spots not only his mother but Shisui there too. Shisui looks comically alarmed, like a cat caught doing something it shouldn’t be doing, frozen in place.

The relief he feels curdles when Sasuke realizes that maybe they will agree with her – his mother, especially, is fond of Naruto it seems. It rises sharply in his throat like glass, and Sasuke has to sit down at the table quickly or he thinks he might stumble.

“Sasuke-kun!” Kushina calls, from right behind him, voice a flood of raw emotions. “Can’t you just, at least try? I’m not asking for more than a few words!”

Sasuke can’t even say no through the glass choking him. He shakes his head again, and hides his face in his arms, down on the table it in the hopes she’ll catch a hint. Or at least that it’ll muffle her voice.

His mother’s voice comes to him distantly, as if through water, asking Kushina what she’s asking for.

“I just want him to talk to Naruto,” Kushina says, “Tell him the truth. Tell him I’m watching over him!”

Sasuke feels sick. He looks up to find his cousin shifting a bit. Shisui looks like he wants to sink into the ground, but then straightens a little.

“Kushina-sensei,” Shisui says hesitantly, “That’s not really possible.” When Kushina turns a burning red glare on him, he holds his ground surprisingly well, spine straightening. “Think about it. There are Anbus watching Naruto constantly. When would Sasuke even be able to say anything to him?”

Kushina opens her mouth to retort, but falters halfway through. With a huff, she crosses her arms.

“Well you don’t know until you try ,” she grumbles.

“It’s too risky,” Shisui says.

Kushina looks mutinous. Shisui catches Sasuke’s eye, fingers twitching discreetly, then turns a bright smile on Kushina.

“By the way,” he says brightly, “Hi, sensei. Long time no see.”

Kushina blinks, suddenly realizing who she has in front of her. Blinks again, and then puffs up in outrage.

“Shisui! How dare you! You’ve been avoiding me!” She says, and pounces on Shisui.

“Shit,” Shisui says, softly but with feeling.

Sasuke gratefully uses the distraction to grab his things and flee the room. Hopefully Kushina will forget about this.

Somehow, he doubts it.

Chapter Text

The seat by the window is always pleasantly warm when there’s sunshine. Sasuke wants to do nothing more than curl up in his seat, put his head in his arms, and take a nice nap.

Unfortunately, he’s managed to keep a perfect track record this far with his teachers. So he resists the urge to fall asleep to the sound of Funeno’s sensei voice, and the quiet murmurs and giggles of his classmates.

He’s dozing lightly, head resting over his clasped hands, when a voice startles him.

“Well, someone ’s successful.”

Sasuke doesn’t jump three feet in the air, but it’s a close thing. He turns a wild look on the ghost that surprised him, his heart still beating frantically.

Inuzuka Kegawa grins, unrepentant, at him. She’s exuding so much glee, it can’t be good.

Sasuke nonchalantly grabs his pen, and scribbles a harsh what on his notebook.

Somehow, Kegawa’s grin widens even more. Sasuke is suddenly very glad that Kushina isn’t trailing after Naruto in class today. He doesn’t want to know what sort of explosion would happen if Kegawa met her.

“I’m talking about your little fangirls,” Kegawa tells him, lazily floating above his desk. “I can’t believe you never told me about them.”

Sasuke gives her a dry look. It’s not as though they meet up often. Most of the time, they accidentally bump into each other when Sasuke is out of the compound for some reason. Not every time either – just once in a while.

Then what she just said catches up with him, and he frowns.

What are you talking about? He writes down quickly.

Kegawa reads over his shoulder and starts laughing, drifting helplessly towards the ceiling.

“Good one,” she barks out gleefully. Then she seems to spot his confusion, because she pauses- and starts laughing again. “Oh hell, you really don’t know?”

Sasuke underlines his last question, but Kegawa doesn’t answer him. She’s laughing too hard, and drifting higher and higher.

Soon, she goes through the ceiling, and Sasuke can only barely hear her laughter echo in the walls. When he doesn’t see her come down again, he huffs. Behind him, two of the girls start giggling, probably finding his behaviour strange.

Flushing in embarrassment, Sasuke hunches his shoulders a little and determinedly stares at the teacher.

Senju Tobirama is back again, sitting on the porch at the back of Shisui’s house.

Surprisingly, though, he’s alone there. Sasuke knows that Great Uncle Kagami is busy helping the less focused of their clansmen prepare for the festival. Surely the Nidaime knows that.

“Great Uncle Kagami won’t be back until tomorrow,” Sasuke still says, forgoing greetings.

“I know,” Senju says, turning to look at him. “Am I unwelcome?”

Sasuke wants to grimace, and shrugs uncomfortably.

“It’s festival night,” he says. “Personally I don’t mind, but if the crowd spots you, few of them will be happy about it.”

“Festival,” Senju echoes, thoughtful, “Which one?”

The fact that he doesn’t know shouldn’t come as a surprise, Sasuke thinks. Most festivals and traditions always were private things. Clan matter. Very few outsiders ever were invited to witness them, let alone participate.

In hindsight, maybe that was one of the mistakes the Uchiha did.

Perhaps inviting others to partake, sharing some tradition with the rest of Konoha would have helped them integrate. Saved them. Maybe Sasuke wouldn’t be stuck talking to ghosts then.

But what ifs are useless. With a sigh, Sasuke lets himself fall on the porch. He spills on his back, bringing an arm under his head, uncaring of how it might look. He’s had a long day, and as much as he loves the festival it’s always a tiring time. All of the preparations, and the emotional baggage that goes with them, take their toll.

“Fire festival, in honour of Ammaterasu,” Sasuke says, eventually. He can almost hear Aunt Himiko’s outrage that he dared speak of this with Senju Tobirama of all people, but he doesn’t care. She’s dead, as is everyone else. Sasuke is the defacto clan head now, and if he wants to go around spreading clan secrets, he can. It’s not like ghosts have legs to stand on about keeping secrets anyway. “Before the massacre, it was a big thing for us. We used to cook huge dishes, for everyone to eat around the fire. Pastries, too, and fire-tongues.”

“Fire-tongues?” Senju asks, sounding intrigued.

Sasuke shifts, looking at the former Hokage. He always looks so much more ghostly than everyone else, all bone white and blood red, and with the darkening sky he looks almost unreal. But there’s open curiosity on his face, and no judgment.

None of the resentment or contempt that many of Sasuke’s clansmen pretend the man feels towards them all.

“Spiced dried meat,” Sasuke answers, and can’t quite repress a small smile. “When I was little, Shisui convinced me and a few other kids that eating one actually made you spit fire. A milestone to learn Katon jutsus the proper way, he said.”

Needless to say, he and his cousins had learned the hard and burning way that Shisui was a lying liar who lied. On the other hand, Shisui had been laughing too hard to avoid being dog-piled by all of them.

“I’m guessing it was really spicy?” Senju says, sounding faintly amused.

“Yes,” Sasuke agrees, and then, for the sake of honesty adds, “Although it’s not really that bad once you get used to it. Every dish eaten during the Fire festival is supposed to be spicy. It’s just usually milder in children's portions.”

Senju hums, still faintly amused. There’s a slight quirk to his lips, a shadow of a smile. He looks so much more alive, that way – which is quite ironic.

In the distance, someone starts screaming at someone else about safety measures. Sasuke turns over towards the rest of the compound. He should go back, help his relatives with what none of them can do anymore, then find his mother and prepare his own dinner.

Sasuke shifts again, glancing at his odd companion.

“Why are you here, if not for Great Uncle Kagami?” He wonders aloud.

“Kagami gave me a standing invitation to this place, if I ever need a place to go,” Senju says, and looks at the garden, his expression pensive. “I suppose I simply needed some time away from… Well, from everything else.”

“The Hokage tower?” Sasuke guesses.

Senju arches a brow, and Sasuke shrugs. It’s not his fault if ghosts are all awful gossips. Great Uncle Kagami, for one, is always delighted to talk about his former teacher.

“Yes,” the Nidaime nods simply.

That’s fair enough. Sasuke is pretty sure it must be one of the worst places to linger at. If he were a ghost, he’d certainly avoid it. Politics .

But then again, Senju Tobirama being who he is, Sasuke supposes he is pretty tied to that Tower and all that goes on inside of it. He used to be Hokage, and the regret tying him to this plane has to be related to that.

He wants to ask about that, about the Senju’s reasons for lingering. Before he can, though, his companion tilts his head.

“Why are you here, if not for Kagami?” Senju asks.

Sasuke gives half a shrug, as best as he can while still lying down on the porch.

“I needed some time away too,” he admits.

The Nidaime hums.

“Do you want me to leave you alone?” He asks simply. “There are other places I could go.”

“Hm, no,” Sasuke says.

He doesn’t mind the company. In fact, it’s refreshing, somewhat, to have someone so oddly steady with him. He loves his family dearly, and has fondness for every other ghost that he knows but… They can be a bit much.

The Nidaime isn’t so overwhelming, which is really odd. Such a formidable man shouldn’t be so easy to be around.

“No, I don’t mind,” Sasuke says, again, and gives the man a small nod, “I appreciate the sentiment, though, Nidaime-sama.”

For a long moment, the former Hokage just watches him. He wears his curiosity always so openly, for all that he’s a hard man to read otherwise. It’s a novel thing to find in a ghost.

The dead often lack wonder, lack the desire to learn more.

Sasuke thinks it’s good that the Nidaime still has that. Although it does make him wonder how avid for knowledge the man must have been while alive. If, like most traits the dead retain, it really was more intense then… Then Sasuke thinks it must have been a little terrifying.

But it’s not like he’ll ever know.

“You’re welcome to call me Tobirama,” the Nidaime finally says, after a moment of quiet contemplation. His lips quirk wryly. “I hear that we’re all equal in death.”

A startled laugh escapes Sasuke without his say so.

“As you say, Tobirama-sama.”

It’s easier during the day to remember that he’s alive and his family dead.

But festival nights make it harder for Sasuke. When he’s singing in chorus with a thousand voices, when he’s jumping after his many cousins through the flames, when everyone’s so happy, when everyone is moving together, he forgets for a while.

Right until his body betrays him and forces him to take a break.

The sky has been dark for hours already when Sasuke finally lets himself fall down in the dusty street, breath coming in short pants, limbs trembling in exhaustion. In front of him, his family dances still, ghostly figures made even more ethereal than usual in the flickering firelight.

He wishes he could simply keep going, uncaring of the hours going by, and lose himself in a thousand voices singing to the flames and the sky and the moon and the sun. Wishes he could forget that he’s the only living person among the hundreds of ghosts that whirl together, familiar wraiths celebrating the night away.

The dead do not tire from dancing too much. Their feet do not hurt, and their muscles do not burn. They do not have sore throats from all the singing and laughing they do, and the fire smoke does not bother them once bit.

They dance and they sing, for hours, and they do not stop.

Sasuke envies them.

For a moment, he just stares at them all. Watches the well-known faces blur together, listening to their haunting voices as they sing and sing and sing. He thinks he spots Shisui, dancing and laughing with Izumi. They’re holding the hands of the few cousins younger than them, as they whirl around so much it makes the dust rise under them.

If Sasuke wasn’t so tired and aching, he would join them. But his limbs are still shaking, and he’s still out of breath.

Not looking away from the immense bonfire his family is dancing around, Sasuke grabs for his food and drinks. He hasn’t prepared much, just enough – after several years of doing this, he knows exactly how much he needs, and how much he wants. He already ate several fire tongues before dancing, leaving him with spiced curry breads, and his pastries for dessert.

With a small sigh, Sasuke lets himself relax, leaning back against the street wall and watching while he takes small, careful bites of his food.

It’s delicious, as always. Mikoto helps him make his food every year, giving him pointers and recipes and tips to make it better, and every year Sasuke thinks it tastes better than the last one. It’s also spicier, leaving his mouth tingling and burning just on the edge of too much.

Sasuke likes it, and as every year it serves as a good reminder.

The dead may not need to stop dancing, but the dead cannot eat either. They can’t feel the spices burn in their mouth, can’t feel warmed with just a bite, alive as the flavour hits their tongue.

Sasuke is the only one who can enjoy that now. So, he thinks as he takes another wonderful bite, he needs to enjoy it a hundredfold, for each and every single one of his clansmen that can’t anymore.

By the time he has moved on to dessert, trying valiantly to resist the urge to stuff his face with sweet saffron and cardamom goodness, a few of the ghosts are taking a break as well. Not because they need it, but because it’s traditional to take a pause, relax and chat with each other, before going back to dancing.

Sasuke chokes on part of his pastry when Izumi suddenly appears in front of him, rising from the ground with a smile.

“Oh dear, Sasuke, I’m so sorry,” she tells him, looking genuinely apologetic to have startled him. Her expression shifts as she watches him, “Are you alright?”

Sasuke wheezes, unable to answer, and grabs his container of sweet cinnamon and ginger tea. The warm, spicy taste washes out the last of the crumbs lodged in his throat, and Sasuke takes a deep gulp of air.

“I’m fine,” he manages, looking at her. “Weren’t you with Shisui?”

“She was,” Shisui agrees from right behind him.

Sasuke very determinedly doesn’t startle and jump three feet in the air. He turns towards his cousin, giving him a dark glare.

“Are you trying to kill me?” He asks.

“I would never! How could you think me so evil? You wound me!” Shisui says, clutching at his chest like Sasuke was the one to attempt murder by heart attack. “Izumi, back me up, here!”

“No, Sasuke is right,” Izumi says simply, shrugging and giving Sasuke a small wink and a smile. “You’re sometimes a little evil.”

Shisui makes an inarticulate noise of offense. Izumi simply shakes her head and lets herself drift down next to Sasuke, pretending at lying on the ground.

“Is it good?” She asks, nodding to the rest of his pastries. She sounds slightly wistful, “I remember that Aunt Mikoto baked the most amazing pastries.”

“She gave me the recipe,” Sasuke admits. He takes one of the few ones left, and takes a bite out of it. Muffled, he says, “I’m getting better at them.”

“Looks like,” Shisui says wryly, earning himself a huff and a whack over the head from Izumi. “What! It’s true! He’s practically inhaling them! They have to be delicious!”

“You know exactly what you did,” Izumi tells him shortly, and turns to Sasuke. “But he has a point. They must be pretty delicious.”

Sasuke hums. In his biased opinion, they are.

“The person you marry will be pretty lucky to have you cook for them,” Izumi says, smiling at him.

Sasuke looks at her, feeling slightly uncomfortable, then shrugs.

“I’m not sure I’ll marry anyone,” he says.

“No?” Izumi asks. She, thankfully, doesn’t sound like she’s judging him or disapproving of that. Sasuke is glad for it. “Why not?”

“I just don’t know,” Sasuke says. Shrugs again. “I would need to fall in love first, and then for that person to love me back.”

“Why wouldn’t that happen?” Izumi asks, sounding puzzled. “You’re pretty cute. I’m sure a lot of girls – and boys – in your class are starting to get crushes on you.”

“Um, no,” Sasuke says, wrinkling his nose at the idea. He thinks back on Kegawa’s teasing the other day, and hunches a little on himself as he mumbles, “I’m pretty sure they all think I’m weird.”

Sasuke is not blind, or deaf. He has seen people whisper and gesture to him. He has heard them talk about him on the street.

That weird Uchiha kid, who always gets lost in his thoughts with his eyes staring at the air.

They all think he’s either creepy, or a bit crazy, or simply a moron. Sasuke has heard several whispers likening him to Itachi, and, well- that’s never a good thing, is it, to be compared to you mass-murdering brother who, as far as everyone else knows, is a psychopath.

Shisui, never one to let Sasuke down, snorts as he flops around in the air.

“No offense, Sasuke, but you are a little weird,” he says.

“Thanks,” Sasuke tells him dryly.

“No problem,” Shisui says, and grins at him. “But really, don’t worry. Once you hit puberty, not only will you probably grow into those good genes and looks, but everyone else your age will suddenly stop to think with their brain. All they’ll care about is whether you’re hot or not. And thankfully, our whole clan was bred to have good looks.”

“Shisui!” Izumi exclaims, kicking at him. “Stop saying nonsense!” She turns to Sasuke. “Don’t listen to him.”

“Yes, Sasuke, don’t listen to me,” Shisui says mockingly, “Puberty crushes aren’t a good basis for marriage, anyway. No, what’s going to happen is that one day, you’ll meet someone who can ground your face in the dirt and look fabulous doing it, and you’ll fall head over heels for them.”

“As you would know,” Izumi says, looking just a little bit wicked under her nonchalant air, “with how much you used to badger everyone about your amazing taichou.”

Shisui looks comically like a cat caught with its paw in the pot of cream.

“I have no idea what you mean,” he says, too fast.

Sasuke turns to Izumi, eyes already the biggest, wobbliest, cutest he can make them. She laughs, and then avoids Shisui’s wailing tackle to say.

“You should have heard him sing Hatake-san’s praises,” she says, and her voice gets high pitched and comically similar to Shisui’s when he’s in a fit of ridiculousness. “ Oh, Hatake-taichou is so big and strong! So pretty, but he could also kill me with his pinky finger and not break a sweat doing it! I’m in loooove- ”

“Oh my gods, Izumishutup! ” Shisui shrieks, grabbing her to drag her into the ground.

Izumi is laughing too hard to put up a fight, the sound muffled in the earth. Sasuke can’t help his own laugh, making a mental note to seek her out later to ask for more stories about Shisui’s terrible crush on this Hatake person. He’s pretty sure he’s heard the name a few times, but he has no clue when or where.

Turning back to the bonfire, he finds that everyone is starting to drift back towards the fire. The break is over. Sasuke quickly sips the rest of his tea, and then stands up. He wobbles for the first few steps, but then his mother is suddenly there, motioning for him to join her and Fugaku in the line, and he forgets his tiredness and the ache in his muscles.

Forgets Shisui’s teasing, and the prospect of growing up, and everything else.

Forgets all his troubles, forgets that he’s dancing with ghosts.

Just for a night, he’s allowed to.

There used to be a time, when Sasuke lacked the proper motivation to train.

It wasn’t really because he didn’t want to. More that his motivation had to do with spending time with his family, and impressing his father. If Itachi wasn’t there to help, training felt dumb, and useless. And nothing he ever did seemed to impress Fugaku, to the point where Sasuke had often wondered if it was even worth it.

It figures that it took Itachi leaving for good, and Fugaku dying, for Sasuke to find a motivation of his own.

Killing Danzo isn’t it, even though it’s part of it. It’s a goal , but it’s not the motivation .

No, Sasuke trains, and learns, because he wants to live . He wants to live his life to the fullest, die with as little regrets as possible. Living with ghosts has taught him that. Regrets are an anchor, it ties you up and drags you down, something so heavy it keeps souls from leaving this plane. Sasuke doesn’t want that.

For that, he needs to be strong. Strong enough to survive, first. Strong enough to kill Danzo, eventually, but also strong enough to live long and see all that he wants to see, do all that he wants to do.

He has met so many ghosts, and they have so many stories. Sasuke wants to see the places they talk about, wants to live enough that eventually, even if he does have enough regrets to become a ghost, he’ll have his fair share of stories to tell.

That’s why he trains.

Unfortunately, having the drive to train doesn’t mean he’s always good at it.

Sasuke lets out a frustrated sigh, glaring at the jutsu scroll in his hands. Taijutsu is all well and good, but Sasuke is already pretty good at it, and Mikoto swore that she would teach him some more before he graduates. He also trains it enough, both in the Academy and here, that he feels he’s stagnating a little.

Which is why he decided to grab one of the katon jutsus in his scroll collection, and to learn it. Learning something new is always fun and exciting, and having another jutsu, other than the fireball, in his arsenal would be nice. This trick, a simple way of coating weapons in fire – kunai, ninja wire, and even shuriken – seemed like a good place to start, a simple jutsu compared to some of the more flashy ones his family used.

This far, though, all Sasuke has managed to do is either break his weapons, somehow, or shoot fire at the same time as throwing a weapon, and thus make a hot mess of things.

It’s frustrating.

“What am I doing wrong?” Sasuke mutters to himself, reading the jutsu scroll for what feels like the hundredth time. A few hand signs, an indication on where to direct the chakra, and a picture of the intended result. “Looks easy enough, so why…”

“It’s a chakra control issue,” a voice answers him from a few feet away, making Sasuke drop his scroll and get into a defensive position by instinct. Senju Tobirama arches a brow at him, and nods, “Nice reflexes.”

Sasuke flushes faintly, both at the praise and at his overreaction. Really, he’s not sure why he keeps expecting a threat in the middle of the village, of his home.

The only ones that are ever here are ghosts, and the occasional Anbu – and those do not interact with him.

“Tobirama-sama. You startled me,” Sasuke says by way of an apology, and the Nidame nods, accepting it easily.

“I do not know how your ability with the dead works,” the man says, “but I did figure sensing ghosts must be difficult.”

“Depends on how many there are, and how present they are, really,” Sasuke tells him, absently. More important, though, “What did you mean, about chakra control?”

Tobirama hums, his expression, which had gone contemplative for a moment, clearing. He drifts closer, and when Sasuke makes no move to show discontent at his presence, sits down next to him.

“You know what chakra control is,” Tobirama checks, voice taking the same quality as that of Iruka-sensei when he starts a new lesson. Sasuke nods, and Tobirama goes on, “With better control, come more precise jutsus. Chakra manipulation is an important part of ninjutsu, as a whole, and in this case it'll allow your chakra to stick to your weapon instead of dissipating like it wants to. Of course, other factors come into play. Chakra nature and affinities, for example – but in your case, I doubt that it’s the fire aspect of it that’s giving you trouble.”

He gives a meaningful look at the charred training ground, and the scorched weapons, making Sasuke flush again. A wry smile touches slightly at the dead Hokage’s lips.

“Don’t worry,” he says, “I’ve seen much worse. Kagami used to put everything on fire, not always on purpose, and uncaring of whether it was supposed to be flammable or not.”

Sasuke has trouble imagining that. Great Uncle Kagami was an incredible shinobi, with an almost unparalleled ability for Katon. Surely, he never had the sort of troubles Sasuke is having.

Still, Tobirama was Kagami’s teacher, and as such probably would know better.

So instead of doubting Tobirama’s word, Sasuke decides that he’ll ask Uncle Kagami later, and instead goes back to the previous topic.

“So, I should train my chakra control?” He asks. Pauses, thinking on it, and then plucks a slightly burnt leaf from the ground to slap it on his forehead, “Like that? We learned it at the Academy.”

“Well, that’s a good starting exercise,” Tobirama allows. “But a bit basic, as well. Try sticking leaves on other parts of your body, several of them, and make them turn on themselves. If you can do that, then you can move onto a bit more advanced exercises – that are rather useful for every shinobi to know.”

“What sort of exercises?” Sasuke asks, even as he quickly rips several leaves off the nearest almost intact bush.

“Walking on vertical surfaces,” Tobirama tells him. “And then walking on water. Those are the most useful ones.”

Sasuke nods, thinking back to every time he saw his cousins leap onto walls and jump from trees, somehow never falling. What are the odds the trick to it was this chakra control exercise? He never thought to ask, and the dead do not rely on gravity or chakra anymore so he forgot about it.

Sticking leaves on his arms, legs, and one on the tips of his nose, Sasuke glances at his ghostly companion.

“If I manage to keep all the leaves here, and make them spin, will you teach me that?” He asks, a bit eagerly.

Tobirama seems startled by the question. His expression turns considering soon enough, though. Sasuke focuses on his chakra and his leaves, letting the ghost mull it over.

Finally, Tobirama shifts, crossing his arms but looking fairly relaxed.

“If you manage that,” he says, “And manage to do that jutsu of yours, then yes. I will teach you.”

Sasuke almost drops the leaves in excitement. Instead, he gives the man a smirk.

“I’ll have it done by the end of the week,” he promises.

“There’s no hurry,” Tobirama says, arching a brow.

They’ll have to disagree on that, Sasuke thinks. The faster he learns, the more time he has to learn more and train more as well.

“I’ll still get it done. You’ll see,” he tells Tobirama.

Tobirama hums.

“I guess we will.”

Chapter Text

Kushina is plotting. Sasuke knows it. She has been ever since that day, what feels like an eternity ago, when he refused her demands and got Shisui to distract her, but lately it’s become worse. Truly, it’s pretty obvious to anyone with a passing familiarity with Uzumakis as a whole. Naruto gets that same tilt of his mouth, that same glint in his eyes, when he feels he’s been wronged and needs to plan a prank to get back at whoever is at fault.

In this case, Sasuke is pretty sure Kushina is not planning a prank so much as a way to coerce him into talking to Naruto for her.

Shisui, obviously, agrees with him on that, since he ambushes Sasuke in his room, bursting out of his closet in the middle of the night.

Sasuke does not shriek like a little girl. He does , however, fling five kunais through his cousin’s head.

“Shisui!” He hisses, heart rate steadily going down. “What the hell!”

“Shhh, I’m not here!” Shisui hisses back, almost too quiet to hear.

Sasuke glares at him, and angles himself in his bed to peer around his stupid cousin. Fortunately, his kunais haven’t touched anything important. Unfortunately, they are still lodged pretty deeply in the wall.

“Damn it,” Sasuke grumbles, and glares again at Shisui. It’s not him who is going to have to do the repairs to the wall, after all! Stupid ghosts, having the excuse of being intangible to get out of chores. “What do you want?”

“I’m here to warn you,” Shisui tells him, floating nearer hurriedly. “Kushina-sensei is plotting something!”

“Yes, thank you, I had guessed that myself,” Sasuke snorts, eyeing Shisui flatly.

“You don’t understand!” Shisui says, and reaches out his hands as if to shake Sasuke by the shoulders. He pauses mid-way, probably remembering he can’t do that, and hisses, “She can plan things for months , waiting for the perfect moment to strike! She eats her revenge ice-cold!”

Sasuke arches a brow. He’s pretty sure that Kushina isn’t plotting revenge. Just a plan of action to get him close to her son. And he gets it, really, he does! Family is important, and Naruto is lonely, and that’s awful.

But Sasuke isn’t Naruto’s friend, doesn’t really want to be either, and has otherwise absolutely no reason to speak with him. Besides, Naruto is a person of interest to a lot of high ranked people, constantly under watch.

Sasuke’s not about to do something stupid like get close to the blond idiot, and subsequently attract everyone’s attention.

No, thank you.

He’s good living on his own, with ghosts for sole company and no one paying any mind.

“Your point?” He asks Shisui, already bored of this midnight warning.

“You need to be careful!” Shisui tells him. “Avoid her, as much as you can.”

Sasuke scoffs. As if he hadn’t already been avoiding her. Who does Shisui think he’s talking to? An amateur? Sasuke is a professional at avoiding ghost trouble, and a professional at avoiding Uzumaki trouble. He’s been dodging both for years now, and just combining the two together won’t be enough to trip him up.

Huffing, Sasuke lies back down, and drags his blanket over his head.

“Thanks for the warning, Shisui,” he grumbles. “Now scram, I’ve got school tomorrow.”

“Going to the Academy won’t save you,” Shisui says ominously, because he’s a dramatic bastard. He adds in a mutter, “Besides, what are they teaching you that you don’t already know?”

Sasuke snorts, admitting the point. What the Academy teaches is nothing that his family and plethora of ghost acquaintances haven't already taught him. Even the historical and theoretical parts, Sasuke knows. In fact, he knows a lot of interesting things about those.

People would be surprised to know how many scrolls Sasuke has on various topics.

Ghosts know where to find a lot of things that were left to rot. Sasuke’s clan had a lot of hidden caches. The other ghosts in Konoha had others. Sasuke just does everyone a service by rescuing everything from the dust and mold, and collecting them for his use.

More importantly, he can get actual, not-living testimonies and explanations. Or lessons. Like the ones Tobirama-sama is going to give him, now that he has finally perfected the fire-coating jutsu.

Just thinking about it has Sasuke feeling excited. He's going to get the Nidaime Hokage to teach him! That beats any scroll or any Academy lesson, ever.

It does mean that going to the Academy at this point is pretty useless for him, though. But well. He needs live taijutsu partners, something that none of his relatives or ghost friends can provide. Needs to socialize even if it just means showing up and sitting in a corner near living people, too. And above all, he needs to not stay holed up at home all the time, lest he attracts someone’s attention – like Anbu, the Hokage, or worse, the psych department.

It’s a necessity, and something to do.

Besides, in barely a year and a half Sasuke will be graduating. He’ll get a team, a jounin sensei, and he’ll finally get away from both the Academy and everything in it. If that means Sasuke will be getting away from Naruto too, then that’s just a bonus.

He doesn’t tell Shisui that, though, simply waving a hand in the vague direction of his cousin.

“Go away, Shisui,” he mutters, “I’m tired.”

He hears Shisui sniff in offense.

“I see I’m not wanted here,” Shisui says, his voice growing slightly fainter as he drifts off towards the door. “My own little cousin, so mean-”

Sasuke tunes out the rest, rolling his eyes under his blanket.

Sometimes, he’s not sure why he puts up with Shisui.

Of all the questions Sasuke has ever been asked, questions about his ability to see ghosts are, strangely, rare. Ghosts, by nature, aren’t very curious. If Sasuke tells them he can see them, they often accept it without questions and move on to more interesting things for them. As for the living, it’s not like any of them has a reason to ask, since no one knows he can do it.

Maybe that’s why Sasuke is a bit taken aback when Tobirama mentions it.

He’s puzzling around some jutsu theory scroll, perched sideways on a tree, working on his chakra control while reading, when his ghostly teacher speaks.

“I’ve been meaning to ask,” Tobirama starts, floating sideways next to him, so as to be available for any questions Sasuke might have about the scroll. “Your ability. Is it part of your sharingan?”

Sasuke blinks, mind still stuck on how chakra transformation works in relation with most jutsus, and how that relates to things such as seals, chakra weapons and medical jutsus. The words take a moment to register, and even then they don’t quite make sense.

“My ability,” Sasuke echoes, slowly, looking at Tobirama.

“To see the dead,” Tobirama explains. Patiently, repeats, “Is it related to your sharingan?”

“I don’t have the sharingan,” Sasuke tells him, slowly, mind still trying to adjust to the shift in topic. He respects his teacher, he really does, but sometimes, the Nidaime’s mind makes leaps in logic that leave Sasuke reeling. “I would have said, if I did.”

Strangely, it’s Tobirama’s turn to look surprised at this answer. Sasuke shrugs, even as he starts rolling up the scroll. He has a feeling this is going to be one of those lessons that get derailed by interesting talks. There are many of those, because Senju Tobirama is a well of knowledge and is always ready to theorize and discuss ideas, especially new ones.

Sasuke likes those talks, though. He always learns a lot during them, even if Tobirama often leaves him in the dust at some point.

“You’re my teacher,” Sasuke says. “It’s only natural that I’d tell you, if I had the sharingan, if only so that you could help me train with it.”

“Oh,” Tobirama says, and then huffs wryly. “I figured any sharingan related training would be done with your clan. When I taught Kagami, he was already fully trained with it, and wasn’t allowed to tell me anything about it. Not even answer the simplest question about how it affected his jutsus. He barely even used it during training.”

“Ah, well,” Sasuke nods slowly. “I suppose, I would train my sharingan with my mother.” Or perhaps Izumi, since she had awakened it pretty young and had adapted to it very well. “But as you said, it does affect everything – from jutsus to fighting abilities. It would be stupid to hide such a thing from you.”

Besides, Senju Tobirama was one of the people who studied the sharingan in depth the most. In the end, Kagami’s peerless mastery over the sharingan didn’t have to do only with the clan’s teaching, or his own talent, even if those played a major part in it. It also had to do with his teacher. Sasuke would have to be stupid to ignore such a resource at his disposition.

Sasuke pauses, suddenly struck by a thought. Tobirama is his teacher, isn’t he? Maybe he should start addressing him as such. But it’s not really relevant to the discussion, and can be brought up later. Shaking his head, Sasuke goes back to the topic at hand.

“Besides, you’re dead,” He points out. “Who are you going to spill clan secrets to?”

“A good point,” Tobirama admits. Crosses his arms, as he regards Sasuke curiously, “Which ties in neatly back into my question. How can you see me, then, if not thanks to your sharingan? My theory was that it had to do with your Mangekyou, although you are a bit young to awaken it. Given the circumstances, though, I still expected...”

He trails off, and Sasuke nods, understanding at least where he’s coming from. Given how the sharingan is awakened, one would expect that witnessing his entire clan’s death would be enough. Hell, one might even expect him to have the Mangekyou, as Tobirama clearly half expected him to.

Although to awaken the Mangekyou at seven years old would be unheard of.

“I don’t know,” Sasuke says, and shrugs a bit awkwardly. “Some people never awaken the sharingan. I might be one of them.”

“I doubt that,” Tobirama tells him, sounding so sure of himself that Sasuke can’t help but believe him a little. “You’re an exceptional student, very bright, and from what I can tell you come from a branch that never hasn’t manifested it. I expect it’ll simply take something different to awaken it – which isn’t a bad thing, all things told.”

“Another way than by feeling strong emotions?” Sasuke asks, a little stumped.

“Not exactly,” Tobirama hums, thoughtful. “It’s more that not everyone awakens it by feeling the same emotion. Some awaken it by feeling intense sadness. Others, by growing so angry it makes them bleed chakra through their eyes-” Sasuke snorts at the image, and Tobirama quirks a quick smirk his way- “while others feel such intense fear that they awaken it out of sheer survival instinct. There even has been one recorded case of someone awakening it by suddenly feeling extremely determined.”

“Makes sense,” Sasuke says, nodding slowly. He supposes, then, that fear and grief are out. Anger too, probably. Except, “Determination isn’t really a negative emotion.”

“It’s not really an emotion at all,” Tobirama says, simply. Adds, wry, “That one case was… special. But still, I didn’t say negative emotions. Just emotions.”

He looks down – well, to his feet rather, as they are still sideways – his expression a mix of pensive and something like sadness.

“I’ve always believed that your clan felt too much. Your bloodline depends on it, after all. It alters your very brain to accept more sensory input – and as a result, you feel even more. That’s why many from your clan simply went mad, or burned out, or simply snapped in other ways. Even with the shift in your brains, it’s not enough, and eventually it becomes too much. No human is made to feel so much, so intensely.” He pauses, gaze growing distant. “I hoped to prevent this, in part, when I created the police. A way to give the Uchiha responsibility, and authority, and a drive – somewhere to push all those emotions, into something productive and important. A last line of defense for the village as well, if it ever came to that but-” He shakes his head. “In the end, it seems that like in many things, my reasoning was flawed, and got twisted further by time and outside influences. I never intended for things to end this way – but maybe I should have expected it, and acted to prevent it. I made many mistakes, and the only people I can apologize to are the dead and you.”

“It’s not your fault,” Sasuke says, looking at him.

“No, it is,” Tobirama says. Quirks a humourless smile when Sasuke opens his mouth to protest, and raises a hand to cut him off, “Don’t argue. The blame doesn’t lay at my feet alone, I know that. I still helped to pave the way, even if I did not intend to do so. That’s on me, and I accept it.”

Sasuke scowls, but eventually nods. The very least he can do is respect that, even if he doesn’t like it.

“But anyway, we got sidetracked,” Tobirama suddenly says. “Since my theory about your sharingan being what’s causing this is obviously incorrect, I wonder what is the cause?”

“I don’t know,” Sasuke admits, jumping on the change in topics. It might not be much better, but at least it’s something he’d actually like answers for. “I just know that it happened the night of the massacre. I woke up the next day and I could see the dead.”

“Fascinating,” Tobirama muses. “Maybe an inequality in spiritual energy, caused by some sort of shock to your system that went so deep it shifted your balance?”

“I- Maybe,” Sasuke allows, because that’s better than his pet theory about having almost died being the cause. Many people almost die, and they never see ghosts afterwards. “Itachi used his Mangekyou on me, too. Tsukuyomi. It’s only supposed to be a very powerful genjutsu, though, so I don’t know why it would affect me that way.”

“Still a valid option that we can’t disregard,” Tobirama says, nodding thoughtfully. “Mangekyou abilities are strange, varied and complex. One never knows fully what it can do.” A hum. “I still think it might be your own ability. Perhaps not from the sharingan at all, but still something that is yours.”

Sasuke doesn’t really know what to say to that. Seeing the dead has never really been much of an ability . It’s something, just a fact of his life. An ability would imply he has some power, some control over it – and Sasuke doesn’t have that.

Except. He kind of does.

There’s a reason he has authority over the ghosts in the compound, and somewhat those in Konoha as a whole. It’s not because he’s alive and can see what no one else can. It’s because he can affect them, when he grows over-emotional.

Emotions , Sasuke thinks. Apparently Tobirama was onto something, even if the rest of it was wrong.

It’s exciting, in a way, to suddenly realize that this thing he can do isn’t just a burden. That maybe, just maybe, it’s not a defect caused by Itachi, or the gods’ idea of a practical joke. That maybe it’s not the result of his heart and soul breaking when his world ended.

Maybe seeing ghosts is actually his .

That’s… That’s a good thought.

Smiling to himself, Sasuke turns towards Tobirama. The white-haired ghost is still distracted, thinking about it, looking as though he’s considering the secrets of the universe. Not knowing he just gave Sasuke something far more precious than a few words. That he gave him a little bit of hope.

Maybe he should return the favour.

“I like that idea,” Sasuke says, and gives a small smile when it gets him a slightly confused blink, Tobirama still half-distracted by his thoughts. “You’re very smart, Tobirama-sensei.”

“Ah,” Tobirama starts, blinking again, and then pauses, registering the form of address.

Sasuke kind of wishes he did have the sharingan, to memorize the half-confused half-pleased expression on his teacher’s face.

It suits him.

F unnily enough, Kushina waits until summer to put her grand plan into action.

Not that it’s funny at all.

Sasuke already has a complicated relationship with summer, and the month of July especially. It’s both the month of his birthday, and the month of his clan’s death anniversary. Both happened within two weeks of each other, and to this day Sasuke still can’t appreciate that time of year like he used to. He doesn’t think he’ll ever do.

So it’s fair to say that he’s already in a poor mood when, out of nowhere, everything goes pear-shaped.

It starts small, innocuous - a few objects are gone from where Sasuke left them, cats are getting spooked into irritation, the ghosts in the compound are getting agitated again. That much can be justified by it being summer, and Sasuke being distracted.

Because he still has summer homework, and more things to work on that require calm and quiet, Sasuke ends up leaving the compound itself. He intends to find a quiet spot somewhere - either at a park, or by the riverbank - except that with summer comes children and civilians taking walks and resting in the sun in Sasuke’s favourite spots. There’s also been a few unfortunate accidents in Sasuke’s usual public-open training ground, apparently, since the entire area is currently being worked on by a team of grumpy genins on a D-rank.

It’s only when Sasuke finds very specific roads blocked - one by sewage water overflow, the other by an overturned cabbage cart, the last by a large group of excited Inuzuka ninken and confused Inuzuka shinobis - that he starts suspecting that something is afoot.

He doesn’t realize it in time, however.

Sasuke crosses the street, eyeing the dogs suspiciously, and doesn’t see Kushina coming.

He feels her, though, when she drops on him with all the suddenness and violence of a tsunami.

The wave analogy is an accurate one - it feels like an entire lake of ice-water and burning emotions gets emptied over Sasuke’s head in one big rush, leaving him struck still, head ringing with a thousand Uzushio bells, muted as though underwater.

As though drowning.

He can’t breathe.

“ Sasuke~ ” The water croons, weaving around him, a snake made of invisible chains. “ Are you ready to run? ”

Sasuke has never felt so cold. The emotions are still rushing him, and the bells are still ringing, louder and louder.

He can’t breathe.

He can’t move.

“ Come on ,” the water urges, and Sasuke remembers Itachi’s voice that night, the indifference as he stared at Sasuke’s terrified, frozen shape, and decided to teach him a lesson. It’s his voice that Sasuke hears as the water speaks again, in stereo, “ Run along now .”

And all at once, the pressure drops, and Sasuke can breathe.

A dazed look around tells him that no one noticed anything - no one’s looking at him, all far too focused on the ninken that are now barking at nothing, looking spooked. A hiss of boiling water comes behind him, the hiss of Itachi’s blade being drawn -

Sasuke bolts.

He takes off running, and behind him someone laughs, loud like toll bells, like a demon.

He thinks he’s being chased, but doesn’t look back, can’t, can’t look at him, at his eyes, danger - so he keeps running, faster, faster, until he skids around another street, and another.

Sasuke keeps running, ignoring the few odd looks he gets from passer bys, until he recognizes his surroundings.

Until he’s standing in front of the academy and-

Naruto, a bright spot of colour, incongruous in Sasuke’s black and red filled mind, looks up from where he’s sitting, on the swing. He looks at Sasuke with a sad frown.

Reality reasserts itself, forceful.

Itachi isn’t there, and Sasuke is in the village, safe.

And what’s pursuing him is a known entity.

Sasuke whirls around. Kushina, who was chasing him, stops in her tracks, as though glitching. Her hair is standing on end, separated in nine chunks, and there’s a fox mask on her face, her eyes a glowing red. She feels like a whirlpool of water and emotions still, like some unknown danger. Like a threat.

At this moment, she is a threat, every inch the Uzushio ghost she’s always been.

Sasuke stares at her, meeting her eyes. She stares back, unmoving. Obviously ready to do anything to keep him moving towards her son. Kushina’s dead, after all. She doesn’t care for the living woes of some Uchiha boy, Mikoto’s son or not. She only cares for her regrets and her emotions, for her son, sitting lonely on his swing, unable to know that the love she feels burns so bright it’s deadly.

She has nothing to lose, everything to gain.

Or she would, usually.

Except, as Sasuke has always known, and as Tobirama-sensei reminded him, seeing the dead is his . His ability - his curse - his blessing.

He can’t just see the dead, he can affect them. Especially when he gets over-emotional.

And well, Kushina is leaking emotions everywhere, and Sasuke certainly is feeling all of them in addition to a cocktail of his own, straight from a Tsukuyomi-tinted nightmare. He’s got the emotions to spare. He’s overflowing with them.

So he takes a deep breath, pushes all of it out of himself, like a flood of his own molten soul, and speaks.

Leave! He says, shouts, screams , all of his soul and emotions and exhaustion behind the single word, the order.

No one in the street reacts to it. Naruto is still on the swing, having heard nothing but silence.

Kushina shrieks in shock and anger, as the rush crashes into her like a punch of static, sending her flying.

She disappears into the distance, her wails and bell rings echoing behind her.

Sasuke doesn’t watch her, instead casting a glance behind him. Naruto is still watching him, a weird frown on his face.

For one single, stupid second, Sasuke considers doing it. Go up to him, sit down, and tell him that his mother is a bitch that loves him so much she just made Sasuke feel like he was drowning and burning alive, just so he would talk to him. Just so he would tell Naruto that Kushina is watching over him.

That he isn’t alone.

That the world is unfair, but at least someone’s there.

But it’s not how things work.

Sasuke’s burst of static was the biggest he’s ever made, the first he made half-intentionally. Every single ghost in Konoha has to have felt it. Every single one of them knows what it means.

Right now, even looking around, Sasuke can’t see a single dead shade of a person.

Right now, just like Naruto, he’s alone.

Even though he wants his family, wants a hug, wants his mother to hold him and tell him that she’ll talk to Kushina, get her to stop-

The world isn’t fair, and no one’s there.

Silent, heart aching, Sasuke turns away from Naruto, and heads home.

The compound stays empty and lifeless for a week.

“You’re not welcome here,” Mikoto says, her voice echoing from the porch to the living room where Sasuke is currently working.

Across from him, Shisui stiffens. His shape goes bleak and wet, eyes empty, before flickering back to his usual appearance. Pursing his lips, he looks at Sasuke.

“Mikoto-” Kushina’s voice comes next, pleading and confused.

Sasuke breathes out, slowly, from his nose, and closes his book. He wasn’t reading it anymore anyway. Izumi, who had been drifting close to the door, glares in Kushina’s vague direction, before glaring at Shisui next.

Do something! She mouths at him, eyes sharingan red and fierce.

Shisui flails, looking like an octopus out of water.

What can I do?! He mouths back, gesturing frantically at Sasuke.

Sasuke wonders, blandly, if they’ve forgotten he can still see them.

“No, Kushina,” his mother tells her friend, her tone brooking no argument. “What you did the other day, to my son , was out of line. Until you know better, and apologize, as well as cease your attempts to threaten him-”

“I wasn’t threatening him-”

“ Kushina , we all felt you when you did… whatever you did,” Mikoto cuts her off. “Don’t lie to me. If you had been alive, and had done the living equivalent to that, to Sasuke? I would have killed you myself.”

There’s a beat of silence, and then, mulish.

“It was just some harmless prank,” Kushina grumbles.

This gets Izumi to growl , and she turns around, as though ready to go out there and give Kushina a piece of her mind. Shisui yelps, throwing himself at her - she squawks as she melts through the floor, and Shisui darts for the entrance, clearly to do something , whatever it is, to resolve this.

“It wasn’t,” Mikoto refutes, sharply. “It’s-” She cuts off. Sasuke can’t hear anything clearly, but he makes out Shisui’s voice, just barely. Then, tersely, Sasuke’s mother concludes, “Let’s take this conversation to the compound entrance.”

“But-”

“Sensei, please,” Shisui says, loud enough to be heard.

From her position halfway through the floor, Izumi sighs, looking frustrated. But whatever Shisui is doing, it must work, because with a grumble, Kushina accepts. Izumi relaxes faintly when Sasuke does too, the both of them feeling Uzumaki’s presence drifting away.

“Are you okay, Sasuke?” Izumi asks, the moment they’re both alone - or as alone as they can be.

“Fine,” Sasuke sighs. He looks at his book, not really seeing it, “Tired, I guess.”

In the corner of his eyes, Izumi wavers, a picture caught between ageless life and gory death. It’s enough to make Sasuke look up from his book again, and look at her. The purple of his cousin’s usual outfit is torn up right over her heart, blood a dark stain on the cloth.

She’s usually one of the most stable ghosts, when it comes to hiding her death wounds. That she’s agitated enough to show it makes Sasuke’s lips thin.

She’s not the only one that has been acting out lately. Ever since Kushina’s stint, and Sasuke’s retaliation, many ghosts have been either avoiding him, or acting out whenever he’s near.

Sasuke understands why, of course he does - when you’re dead, nothing is supposed to hurt you anymore, and they are not supposed to hurt anyone either. And yet here Sasuke is, abnormal, an error, unnatural. Just dead enough that Uzushio ghosts can drown him, and that he in turn can burn them. Just alive enough that pain is the only thing that translates over.

It’s not the first time it happens, and it probably won’t be the last time.

“I’m sorry,” he tells Izumi, something hard lodged in his throat. 

“You have nothing to be sorry for,” Izumi immediately says, and in front of Sasuke’s eyes, time rewinds. The blood vanishes, her clothes mend, and she looks as alive as she’ll ever look anymore. Her eyes are sharingan red, making him relax further as she says, “Sasuke, Kushina shouldn’t have done what she did. What you did in response was understandable.”

“But it scares everyone when I do,” Sasuke reminds her.

Izumi nods, because death makes everyone honest in ways that can be both useful and agony. She sighs, and leans back, until she’s hanging upside down in the air, hair floating like a banner in a non-existent wind.

“It’s pretty scary,” Izumi agrees. “But it wouldn’t be fair, if we could affect you and you couldn’t. Death, at least, is good for that.”

The world isn’t fair, Sasuke wants to tell her. To remind her, like he was reminded so starkly last week. All alone in his empty compound, deserted even of ghosts, with Itachi’s words and red tinted nightmares for sole company.

But… He supposes she has a point.

In death, all of them are equal, and things are unfair just as equally.

It makes it, ironically, pretty fair.

Besides, Sasuke is the one being unfair right now. He knows he spooked every ghost in Konoha with his outburst - deserved or not - but now most of them are back to lingering in their usual spots, and greeting him. Sure, conversation is still stilted, and some of them obviously are still jittery and nervous around him, but they’re slowly going back to normal.

Tobirama-sensei dropped by just three days ago to remind him he had exercises to work on, looking as if nothing had ever happened. Inuzuka Kegawa had been cackling at him just yesterday when one of the girls from the Academy had seen him in the street and squeaked like a terrified mouse.

The compound isn’t empty anymore, and his family is back to keeping him company.

Everything will be fine.

Chapter Text

It’s been a long time since Sasuke has been so excited to leave the Academy for the day. He’s all but vibrating in his seat, staring more often at the clock than at Iruka-sensei. Even Kushina’s presence, staring at him insistently from her spot right above Naruto’s head, can’t dim his enthusiasm.

She’s been pestering him again, ever since her latest plan to get him to talk to her son failed. Nothing on the scale of her first, disastrous idea all those weeks ago though, thankfully. It seems that whatever she and Mikoto and Shisui talked about that day was enough to make her rethink her approach into something… milder.

It’s a pleasant surprise, at least, that she adapted at least this much. Ghosts usually do not change after their death, they do not grow, they do not learn.

Yet, her pranks are manageable now.

The fact that Kushina can learn, that she heard the words thrown at her by Sasuke’s family and friends, and that she went as far as to realize that she did go too far, is a good thing. It leaves Sasuke feeling cautiously optimistic about the fact that maybe, eventually, she’ll mellow a bit more. As a ghost, an Uzushio one to boot, it’s a lot to expect from her. But hope springs eternal.

The fact that she still isn’t allowed to show up in the compound, unless she wants to be thrown out by everyone, helps too. Sasuke likes knowing that his family supports him in this, and even in death tries to provide him with a safe space where he won’t have to worry about even the most harmless of Kushina’s ideas. Even Shisui, who respects his old teacher so much. Even Mikoto.

Sasuke knows that his mother loves Kushina, with strong enough feelings that it transcends her death, yet she still chose Sasuke and his well-being.

Thinking about it always makes something fragile in his chest rattle, warm and delicate and burning.

Still, Kushina hasn’t given up, and on any other day Sasuke would be wary of what new plot is hatching in that awful, evil mind of hers. Naruto’s pranks have nothing on his mother’s skill, dead or not. 

Today, though, nothing she can do will bring him down.

Soon, he’ll be able to go home, and then join his mother at Shisui and Great Uncle Kagami’s house. Mikoto has promised him that she would - finally, finally - start teaching him a new taijutsu form today. Sasuke can’t wait.

He’s just about to jump from his seat – and maybe even from the window if it makes the journey home faster – when Iruka-sensei calls.

“Ah, Sasuke-kun, could you remain after class, please?” He says, and smiles at him. “I would like to speak to you.”

Sasuke stills, even as his classmates erupt in giggles and whispers. He can feel everyone’s gaze on him, and it takes him some effort not to fold onto himself with the urge to hide.

There’s no doubt in his mind that they’re wondering what he did wrong – and he’s doing the same.

It can’t be his homework. Or classwork, for that matter. He’s never late, performs better than anyone else, and has never been anything but an exemplary student.

Sasuke is still wondering, mind going in circles frantically, what he did wrong, when the last of his classmates leaves and he’s left alone with Iruka-sensei.

“I’m sorry for calling on you like that, Sasuke-kun,” Iruka-sensei says, and smiles. It’s a nice smile, always warm, always looking like he actually cares, and one of the reasons he’s Sasuke’s favourite teacher at the Academy. “I just wanted to talk.”

“Of course,” Sasuke says, and tries to swallow his unease. “I’ll have to get home soon, though, my-” mother is waiting for me. Right, he can’t say that. Hoping Iruka-sensei doesn’t notice his faltering words, or at least doesn’t comment, he finishes lamely, “uh, my, cats need feeding.”

“Ah, sure,” Iruka-sensei says, blinking at him. He rubs at the back of his head, “I’ll try to make this quick, then. You’ve been looking more tired and distracted lately, and I was just wondering if everything is fine?”

Sasuke blinks, surprised.

It’s… true, he supposes. He has been paying even less attention in class than usual, bringing his own scrolls to read during the boring parts, and almost falling asleep in a few lectures. It's just that compared to Senju Tobirama, Mizuki or Futeno-sensei's lectures are a little lacking.

He hadn’t actually thought anyone would notice, though. Gods, he must have seemed so rude. Flushing in embarrassment, Sasuke gives a shallow bow.

“I apologize,” he says. “It won’t happen again.”

“Ah, no, no, don’t- it’s fine!” Iruka-sensei hastily says, and Sasuke straightens up, blinking at him. His teacher is looking rather awkward, as he says, “I know the material we cover in class is too easy for you. I’m not the only teacher who has noticed, either, but we can’t really make an exception and give you more advanced exercises while we do the normal lesson plan with your classmates.” A pauses, and then he admits. “We had talked about advancing you a year, some time ago, but the council was worried about showing favouritism. And now, since this is the graduating year, we can’t advance you at all.”

Sasuke doubts the only reason the council refused to advance him was because of perceived favouritism. More likely, everyone had Itachi in mind, and thought better not to advance him too quickly, lest he ‘break’ like his brother supposedly did.

Not that it’s what happened, but few know the truth. And besides, Itachi being forced into responsibilities so young might have had to do with his stupid decision to accept Danzo’s offer without thinking of alternatives. And with Danzo in general, in fact.

“That’s alright,” Sasuke says, a bit awkwardly, staring at his teacher. “I’m fine where I am.”

“I’m sure you are,” Iruka-sensei says, and it doesn’t sound like he really believes it. “Still. Graduation is only a few months away. I have no doubt you’ll pass with flying colours, so until then please hang on.”

Sasuke nods silently, wondering if that was what Iruka-sensei wanted to tell him. Hang in there, it’s almost done. Strange. It’s not as though he would start skipping classes at this point of his Academy career.

As if reading his mind, Iruka-sensei goes on.

“I say this, because the next months are going to be a lot of revisions of concepts we’ve learned these past years, and I have no doubt this will be incredibly boring for you,” he says. “But there will also be lessons focusing on more practical things, and administration things – knowledge that will be indispensable for you all to know when you’re active Konoha shinobi.”

Sasuke nods. This makes sense. Better teach them all those things right before graduation, when it’ll be fresh in their mind, and more relevant as well.

“What I mean,” Iruka-sensei tells him, smiling faintly, “Is that for any of the revision lessons, I do not expect you to pay attention. I’ve noticed you brought scrolls to read before. That’s fine. You are free to do so again. As long as you do not fall asleep, and pay attention to the more important lessons, I don’t mind.”

Sasuke flushes, and Iruka-sensei laughs a little. He reaches out a hand, then falters. His hand falls back against his side, a bit awkwardly.

Deciding to save them both more embarrassment, Sasuke bows a little.

“Thank you for this, Iruka-sensei,” he says. “I’ll see you on Monday.”

“Of course,” Iruka-sensei says, and adds. “Have a nice week-end, Sasuke-kun.” A pause, and then, he quickly says, “And if you ever need anything, you know you can come to me, alright?”

Sasuke nods silently, and says his goodbyes quietly, before leaving the classroom.

He notices a gaggle of girls. They start giggling when he inadvertently meets their eyes, and Sasuke quickly looks away and hastens his pace, scowling in embarrassment.

Still, he thinks back on his talk with Iruka-sensei. Honestly, it's a relief to know he'll be allowed to pay attention to other things during the most boring lessons. He hadn't expected his teacher to be so forgiving or understanding. This whole talking to living people thing isn’t so bad, it seems.

The girls' giggles follow him out of the school, and Sasuke mentally revises his opinion a little.

Not so bad… Sometimes.

Mikoto hums thoughtfully when Sasuke tells her about Umino’s words, during a pause in their training.

She ’s not sweating, or tired really, but Sasuke is, and the pause is for his sake. He’s got to get his breath back, and to let his muscles cool down a bit. Too much too fast is only a good way to hurt yourself. Mikoto may not have that problem anymore, but she was a shinobi for too long to forget it entirely.

Especially when it concerns her son’s well-being.

“You have a good teacher,” she eventually tells Sasuke, who glances at her from where he’s doing some cool-down stretches. “I’m glad.”

“He’s not as good as you,” Sasuke retorts, a mutter that has a hint of childishness in it, and Mikoto laughs before she can restrain herself.

Sometimes, her son acts so mature that it’s easy to forget he’s just a child. Lately, though, such small lapses in behaviour have been happening more often. Mikoto’s not sure why , exactly, that is the case, but she’s glad either way.

Sasuke is the whole reason she’s here, and she’s glad to see him get better. Especially after Kushina’s disastrous plan, a few months back. As far as Mikoto knows, her friend has been keeping her promise, and kept away from Sasuke for the most part since then, and when she hasn’t she’s only been pulling actual pranks and talking to him.

She better be, at least. Kushina knows that the next time she attempts even a fraction of what she did that day, Mikoto will do far worse than what she did, when she’d realized the reason her son had freaked out so completely.

It had hurt, had felt like betrayal, to find out what she had done. Mikoto remembers Kushina being fiercely kind in life, and it’s jarring to see that it’s one of the things that she’s been forgetting in her death. It’s a relief that she hasn’t forgotten it fully, that she has been trying to do better.

It’s an even bigger relief to see Sasuke grow up, and grow well. Grow happier, even, despite everything. Mikoto has never been so proud. Maybe the guilt she feels for leaving him all alone won’t ever fade, the weight crushing her some days, but that’s alright. It’s nothing less than she deserves.

“Shisui told me you’ve been ditching him to train more with the Nidaime,” Mikoto says, shifting topics and trains of thoughts before she can spiral down. This hasn’t quite been bothering her, but she wants answers, “He’s been teaching you chakra control.”

“Shisui talks too much,” Sasuke mutters, and he looks faintly guilty as he looks at her. “Does this bother you?”

“Of course not,” Mikoto replies simply. “I just wanted to make sure it was what you wanted. You haven’t told me about it.”

Sasuke winces, looking away. Then he looks back at her. There’s seriousness there, erasing what little childishness Mikoto had managed to bring out, and it pangs through her, making her form flicker for a beat.

She wants- She wants- She wishes-

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you,” Sasuke says, unknowingly bringing her out of her slowly degrading thoughts. He then smiles, and it’s content at least, even if small. “Tobirama-sensei has been teaching me a lot of things. He knows a lot.”

“I would expect so, yes,” Mikoto says, softly, trying to bring herself back to a semblance of humanity before he can notice her slipping.

She inspects her son, but he truly doesn’t look upset, or uneasy. It seems, then, that Himiko’s pet theory about Sasuke seeking out the Nidaime out of rebellious spirit against the clan has little truth, if any, to it. Mikoto hadn’t believed it, but.

But she’s not alive any more, and she forgets, sometimes, that her son is. That he’ll change even more with every year.

She fears, some days, that one day he’ll have grown so much, changed so much, that she won’t recognize him anymore. Ghosts sometimes cling to the past too hard. Mikoto was never the type, but she fears it all the same.

If Kushina, who has one of the strongest minds she knows, managed to get lost in Uzushio, and still forgets her own character some days, then Mikoto could. She already sometimes forgets her shape, when her emotions become too much, becoming nothing more than an echo chamber of her own memories. Though she always manages to bring herself back, and has never shown herself so flawed to Sasuke, she fears that maybe one day she will fail him in this too.

 It’s a terrifying prospect, truly.

The fact that she feels fear about it is a good thing, in a way, she supposes. Keeps her in check.

“So,” she says, and tries to make it lighter than her heavy thoughts. “What has Nidaime-sama been teaching you?”

Sasuke lights up a little, and immediately starts telling her all about what the dead Senju has been doing with him. Chakra control, mostly, but apparently also chakra theory, and some more advanced concepts about various things.

Mikoto smiles and nods as Sasuke excitedly – or well, his version of it – tells her about the Nidaime’s theories on a few things.

“He’s very smart, mother! Sometimes I’ve got a hard time keeping up with him, and sometimes he gets a bit carried away, but he’s good at explaining and simplifying concepts,” Sasuke says, and there’s enough of a smile tugging at his lips, enough of a spark in his eyes that it can be counted as gushing .

It’s a good look on him, and Mikoto is happy to see it again. He used to be such a bright child.

She can’t help herself, as she says, “Sounds like he’s a great teacher.”

“He is!” Sasuke agrees immediately.

“Hm, and is Nidaime-sama as good a teacher as me?” Mikoto asks, mostly teasing but making her tone mild enough that Sasuke won’t be able to tell immediately if she’s joking or not.

It’s possible that he hasn’t much experience with her teasing, and that’s… Well. Something else that she regrets, yet another pebble added to the mountain of rocks that keeps her on the plane of the living.

She never was a good mother, not good enough for her children to depend on, not good enough to prevent their fate, and that is a bitter taste that will never leave her throat, just like the iron tang of her own blood.

But she’s here, and he can see and hear her, so maybe. Maybe Mikoto can try to fix some of her mistakes.

Sasuke flushes, though, red overtaking his face easily – Uchiha genetics are a curse on that front, but for once it just serves to amuse Mikoto. He looks so embarrassed, it’s adorable.

“Of course he’s not,” Sasuke says, but with every word he says the red climbs steadily higher on his face, until he’s red to the tip of his ears. He’s not even looking at her, eyes averted towards the ground. He mutters, “You’re the best teacher.”

“I am?” She says, and when he nods his head, pouting at nothing, she smiles at him.

She can’t resist reaching out, and puts her hands in his hair, ruffling it. Maybe he can’t feel the touch, but it’s the intent that matters, and the slightly pleased edge of his expression makes it worth it. 

“I was joking, Sasuke,” she says, and smiles at him. “I’m so very glad you’re getting along with him.”

She truly is. As much as she’s glad he’s alright with the clan, despite all of them being dead, she worries. He gets along so well with every Uchiha ghost, and spends a lot of time with Shisui, Izumi and their other cousins. Comparatively, Sasuke has few friends that aren’t Uchiha – so she’s always glad when he talks to her about ghosts that he regularly meets that aren’t.

Of course, the best thing would be making living friends, but… One step at a time.

Mikoto will let him get out of his comfort zone and get along with ghosts outside the clan, before she starts pushing for him to get along with the living as well.

That he likes this Iruka-sensei is a good start.

Hopefully, when he graduates in a few months he’ll get along with his new team.

She must be making some sort of expression, because Sasuke’s blush has receded, and he’s watching her a bit warily. Mikoto smiles at him, and decides to distract him promptly.

“Alright,” she says, clapping her hands together. “Enough chit chat! Back to training! I want you to have mastered those three katas by the end of the hour!”

Sasuke nods, never one to complain, and Mikoto doesn’t let him see her smile falter.

She wishes, sometimes, that things could have been different. That she could be truly ruffling his hair, truly encouraging him to do his best. That she could hug him.

She wishes she hadn’t died, and that Sasuke wouldn’t feel the need to become so strong so fast in answer.

But she did. She died, as did the whole clan and she can’t tell him to stop. Not when she can’t protect him any more.

Not when he’s the only one who can, now.

Sasuke walks out of his graduation exam buzzing with excitement and pride. His family had told him that the exam wouldn't be all that difficult, but somehow he'd still expected… well, more than showing basic jutsu proficiency.

His hitai-ate is a foreign, solid weight on his forehead. Sasuke can't help but touch the cool, engraved metal with the tip of his fingers. After a moment of deliberation, he removes it from his head, and instead ties it around his throat. It's the most fragile part, after all, and especially valuable to his clan traditionally - a damaged throat makes for poor katon jutsus.

He's not paying too much attention to his surroundings, expecting to slip away from the crowd of expectant parents waiting for his classmates discreetly, to head home and celebrate quietly over a nice dinner. So he startles when a cheer, deafening, suddenly comes from the entrance.

Sasuke looks up and finds his family there, floating just a little away from every other living family. If it weren't for their slight intangibility, or the way Shisui and Izumi are up in the air several feet, they'd look like any other proud group waiting for their newly graduated relative. Sasuke can spot not only his clan members - a flock of them, dark like carrion birds - but also a few familiar faces. There's Kegawa, grinning with all her sharp teeth at him, floating nearby with a few other ghosts that Sasuke sees regularly. There even is Tobirama-sensei, standing further back, away from the many, many Uchiha ghosts.

When he meets his eyes, the Nidaime nods, a small, proud smile on his face. Then he turns around and floats away.

Not a moment too soon, because with an excited shout, Sasuke's family converges on him like a well-meaning cloud of intangible, flickering shapes. There are several ghostly limbs trying to ruffle his hair, pat his back and arms, or poke at him. The flurry of movement makes a gust of wind appear around him, like a small, localized tornado.

"Enough, enough," Sasuke whisper-shouts, blindly stumbling away from the entrance and all the living people there that might notice something amiss.

Like the wind.

Or the way Sasuke can't stop smiling.

Maybe they might even hear the way his heart beats too loud. He's so intensely glad that his family came, that he's not alone, that he made them proud . Sasuke feels like his chest might burst with warmth, like he might spit out a fireball by accident.

He has always been happy to be able to see his family, even in their death. But right now, embraced from everywhere by ghostly limbs, with his mother trying her best at pinching his cheeks and his father quietly approving, Sasuke truly feels lucky.

He hadn't expected to have a normal graduation experience.

"Enough, come on, give me space," Sasuke says again, cheeks feeling warm with both pride and embarrassment. "You can hug me when I'm home!"

Fortunately, his family seems to find it agreeable. Or maybe it's because they have a surprise planned at the compound. Sasuke will have to pretend to be surprised, even though he knows all about the secret party.

Ghosts really can't keep a secret to save their lives - hah - and some of them had even asked him for help to prepare it, given their inability to become tangible.

Just as he's about to follow the dead procession of his family home, a flicker of bright colour attracts Sasuke's attention. He turns back, curious.

There's Naruto sitting on the swing by the tree, looking miserable. There's no hitai-ate on him - no surprises there, given his academic skills - and no one truly there to either congratulate or comfort him by his side.

Only Kushina stands with him, her face flickering between a snarling mask and an expression full of sadness so potent Sasuke can almost taste it from here.

For a single, long second, Sasuke contemplates trying to go to him, to say something.

He has no idea what, though. He doesn't know Naruto. Doesn't like him. Wouldn't it be condescending to go and try to comfort him, when Sasuke succeeded and Naruto didn't?

"Oi, Sasuke, hurry up!" Shisui hollers at him from further away.

I'm coming, Sasuke wants to shout back, staying silent only through the awareness of the crowd still there at the gates, not too far away.

Without looking back, Sasuke jogs after his family, heading home.

Leaving behind him Naruto, with Kushina's ghost for sole, invisible company.

The day after the graduation exam, Sasuke is, pardon the pun, dead on his feet.

Apparently, Mizuki-sensei betrayed the village, and caused a lot of trouble. The ghost gossip-vine has been buzzing since the previous evening.

That’s not what kept Sasuke from getting any proper sleep, though. Most ghosts know better than to bother him with news like that, that can wait until the next day.

Kushina isn't like most ghosts. She also doesn’t care about Sasuke’s sleep, especially when Naruto is involved, and had thus woken him up when she had gone to scream at Mikoto in terror and excitement, forgetting in her emotional state that she was forbidden to come to the compound. The news she’d brought had managed to make everyone else forget about it too for a while, and then forgive her trespass when Sasuke had allowed it just this once.

In Kushina’s defense, the events of the night were unbelievable. Apparently, the dead last had, somehow, managed to steal Tobirama-sensei’s scroll of kinjutsu, learn one of the jutsus there, and get back to the traitorous teacher. He’d then managed to beat an adult, trained chuunin. Somehow.

That one of the teachers in the Academy would betray the village has the entire compound in an uproar. Especially since it’s one of Sasuke’s Academy teachers.

Of course, Kushina was more focused on the fact that her son got the genin rank out of it and, even better in her eyes, now knew he hosted the Kyuubi. It apparently almost made up, a little, for the fact that Mizuki had almost killed Naruto in her eyes.

Almost. Very little .

Between Kushina, and all the ghosts that had kept a deep sense of loyalty even in death, Sasuke can foresee a lot of inconvenient drafts, tripping on flat ground, and more annoying little things in the traitor’s future, if he isn’t killed for the offense.

If he is, well. Sasuke hopes for his sake that he won’t leave a ghost.

As much as Sasuke would have liked to, after that whole debacle it was impossible to go back to sleep. Even if Kushina hadn’t been screaming and jumping around enough to wake the dead - hah - Sasuke wouldn’t have had a quiet moment. Every ghost around had swarmed the compound to either ask for his help or his opinion on the matter, during the events, apparently under the impression that Sasuke’s home was the perfect place for a gossip gathering and an emergency meeting place - especially since Kushina was allowed back this once.

As though Sasuke could have done anything about it all, when Anbus and the village’s jounin were on the case.

It had only been once Tobirama-sensei had finally dropped by, to relay to Sasuke - and thus to all the ghosts shamelessly eavesdropping - that the matter was closed, that the dead had slowly drifted away.

Unfortunately, by that time the sun was already peeking through the trees on the horizon.

Tobirama-sensei’s visit hadn’t helped him fall asleep either. Between the worrying news of Mizuki’s betrayal possibly being linked to Orochimaru, and the fact that Naruto had apparently managed to get into a highly secured place by using a simple henge, Sasuke had a lot on his mind.

What his teacher had told him next had just been the icing on the cake.

Apparently, Tobirama-sensei wished to discuss something important with him, once he was done with the team assignments. Something possibly related to the scroll of Kinjutsu that Naruto stole.

How was Sasuke supposed to sleep after that?

In the end, he didn’t get a single wink of rest. Enough so that Shisui had commented on him 'looking even more like a ghost' when he had gotten breakfast.

Sasuke's only relief is that he managed to convince his family not to accompany him to class. Some people weren't so lucky - he can see a few ghosts drifting after students, sometimes looking enough alike that it's clear they are related.

Then again his classmates have no idea they have witnesses to this day.

Sasuke is two seconds away from falling asleep on his desk, his interlocked fingers and propped elbows the only thing keeping him vaguely upright, when some noise erupts at the back of the class. Sasuke balefully glances at the door, and huffs when he realizes that it’s only his classmates being their usual rowdy selves. Apparently being made officially genin didn’t magically cure them of immaturity.

In fact, given that somehow everyone is just being absurdly loud, it might just have made them worse.

That, or Sasuke is just too tired to deal with the barest sound.

He glares at the front of the class, wishing for Iruka-sensei to come already and tell them the team assignments, so he can be done and go home after meeting his Jounin-sensei. There might be a test to go through, but at this point Sasuke is ready to murder everyone in this room and beyond, including his supposed Jounin-sensei, if it means he can go home and meet Tobirama-sensei.

And then, sleep.

Sweet, sweet, merciful sleep.

His fantasy of either strangling one of the boys that is talking too loudly with his friends at the front of the class, or just managing to teleport to bed, is rather rudely interrupted by someone jumping on his desk.

Kushina’s presence, floating above with her hair a bloody flag, is a dead give-away of who it is. 

Naruto squints at him, looking annoyed. Sasuke glares back, and considers very seriously how much trouble Kushina could give him if he pushed the idiot off his desk.

It could be worth it.

Before he can do anything, however, some moron’s arms flies, and knocks into Naruto. Sasuke can’t even react, it happens too fast. Naruto stumbles, loses his balance a little.

Their faces meet, teeth knocking uncomfortably together.

Sasuke pushes Naruto away, hard, uncaring of the yelp following the other boy’s tumble to the ground. He can still feel a phantom of the contact, too warm and strange and uncomfortable, and with a curse he hastily wipes at his mouth. It doesn’t make the sensation disappear, but it still helps a little.

Kushina is dangerously still, staring at him with flickering eyes.

She looks livid.

Sasuke feels livid.

That was- that was really disgusting and uncomfortable, even if it lasted barely a second.

Sasuke hasn't kissed anyone living since he told his mother goodbye one morning, a defiant peck on her cheek, only to find her dead in the evening. He had forgotten, he supposes, that living people can be touched other than to beat them up with taijutsu.

It's not a good, nor pleasant, realization.

"Okay, students, settle down!" Iruka-sensei is suddenly there, at the door, saving Sasuke from his own thoughts, and distracting him from the way his lips are still feeling too warm. "You're all genin now, so act like it!"

It has the desired effect. Somehow, everyone manages to grab a seat and act almost like they are civilized people. Iruka-sensei truly is a miracle worker.

Naruto, after shooting a glare at Sasuke, sits in the only seat available - right next to him. Sasuke ignores him.

Ignoring Kushina is harder, but somehow he manages.

Between his exhaustion and the angry ghost in his face, Sasuke misses some of what Iruka-sensei says. He doesn't think it's overly important, if the way everyone around him reverts to moronic, screaming monkeys for a minute, with Naruto shouting something at Inuzuka. At least it gets Kushina's attention away from him. Sasuke is glad for that.

He can't wait to be assigned a team, and be rid of all this trouble.

Iruka-sensei goes on about some basic rules and expectations. Then there are jounin filling in the room.

"Now, for the teams," Iruka-sensei says, and everyone falls blessedly still and silent, holding their breaths, "Team 1…"

Team after team gets named, the students exclaiming in either joy or dismay. The jounins, and the ghosts with them, are watching silently.

"Team 7," Iruka says next, "Haruno Sakura, Uzumaki Naruto," Naruto erupts into a loud cheer, "and Uchiha Sasuke!"

Sasuke can see Naruto hit his head on the desk. A pink haired girl next to him lets out a cheer - for what reason, Sasuke has no idea.

Sasuke twitches, staring incredulously at Iruka-sensei and avoiding Kushina's sudden overwhelming presence.

This must be a joke.

"Well, Sasuke-kun," the red-haired devil in a woman's shape declares sweetly, "You'll have to be friends now, you know."

Sasuke doesn't need to look to know she must currently be grinning like the cat who got the canary, and the cream besides.

He grits his teeth.

Can this day possibly get any worse?

Sasuke jinxed it. He really should have known better than to tempt fate this way.

He, Naruto, and that pink haired girl - Haruno Sakura was the name Iruka called, he thinks - are the only ones left in the room.

It's been two hours already.

Sasuke is really starting to consider mass murder as an option. Maybe Itachi had the right idea in the end.

Shisui, who showed up barely thirty minutes ago when Sasuke hadn’t come home, must be able to tell, because he’s doing the nervous-flickers again.

“I’m sure it’s an honest mistake,” his cousin says, scratching at his cheek. He watches as Naruto grabs a chalk-filled eraser and starts setting up a stupid prank, unaware of Kushina’s gleeful encouragements, and grimaces a smile, “Who did you say your jounin-sensei was again?”

“Iruka-sensei didn’t say,” Sasuke grumbles under his breath.

Haruno, thankfully, is distracted by Naruto’s idea and not paying him more attention. Sasuke is glad for the small mercy - the girl is one of those giggly ones that obviously find him weird. She’s probably just as unhappy about being on a team with him as Sasuke is about being on a team with both her and Naruto.

She’s trying to dissuade Naruto from keeping his prank up - which, in Sasuke’s opinion, is stupid. Their team’s jounin-sensei is a jounin . There’s no way a miserable chalk eraser prank gets them.

Although, Sasuke muses, it should be good to assess their reaction to the attempt . A lot of adults despise Naruto for things out of his control, a lot of them treat Sasuke like he’s made of fine glass, and he’s sure that even their reaction to Haruno can be telling. So depending on how they react to Naruto’s prank, and to the two of them that let him pull the prank, Sasuke can gather some information.

Before he can do more than straighten in his seat to get a better view past Kushina’s shape, though, a ghost drifts through the door.

Sasuke blinks, recognizing her. The purple markings on her cheeks and the hole in her chest are difficult to forget.

“Oh boy,” the girl murmurs, eyeing the chalk eraser as she drifts under it. “That’s-”

“Rin-chan?” Kushina whispers.

The ghost girl - Rin, apparently - freezes. She looks at Kushina, and all the colour leeches from her shape. Before anyone can react, she drops herself through the floor, fleeing. Kushina, with a confused snarl, immediately dives after her.

“Oh no,” Shisui says, staring at the spot the both of them were occupying a second ago, with the tone of a man that is seeing his worst nightmares given life and reality. “Oh no, come on. Don’t do this to me.”

Sasuke doesn’t get the time to ask what he means - does he know who Rin was, what she meant to Kushina? A hand grabs the door, real and living, and a head of silver hair passes through just as the eraser drops.

A cloud of chalk spreads around the man’s head, the eraser dropping to the floor with a pitiful clatter.

Naruto laughs, Haruno squirms, and Sasuke squints at him in disbelief. There’s just no way this just happened.

Next to him, Shisui whimpers, dropping his face in his hands and valiantly melting into the nearest desk as if it’ll hide him better from view. He just looks ridiculous, limbs sticking out from the wood.

“Hm, my first impression of you all,” the man drawls, obviously not noticing Sasuke’s drama-queen of a cousin, watching them with a single visible eye, “is that I hate all of you.” 

That’s fair enough, Sasuke thinks blandly. Equal treatment so far, at least.

“Join me on the roof,” the jounin adds, and flickers out of the room in a whirl of leaves and wind.

Sasuke sighs and gets up, Haruno already scrambling for the stairs, Naruto left staring dumbly at the leaves drifting to the floor.

As he leaves the room, Sasuke only hears Shisui’s mortified-sounding curse, muffled by the desk he’s still hiding in.

“ Fuck .”

Chapter Text

To be entirely honest, Sasuke misses most of what Naruto says once their teacher is done talking, far too busy staring at Shisui in complete and utter judgment .

That’s Hatake Kakashi.

Hatake.

As in Hatake-taichou, the one guy that Shisui apparently had the biggest damn crush on, when he was alive. The guy that, according to both his cousins, is a ruthless and competent Anbu commander that can in fact kill all of them with his pinky finger and not break a sweat doing it. That same man that was two hours late to meet his genin team, got nailed on the head by Naruto’s stupid prank, and has so far not done much to prove he’s worth anything.

“Don’t look at me like that!” Shisui wails, muffled by the pillar he’s currently hiding in, like the coward he is. “I can see you judging me!”

He’s not wrong, but just for that Sasuke glares at him harder.

The moment he’s home, he swears he’s finding Izumi and roping her into making sure that Shisui knows he’s got shit taste in men. It’s what he deserves.

“Next,” Hatake says, snapping Sasuke out of his current occupation.

Well then. Given what information about him Hatake had given them - his name, and that’s all - Sasuke sees no need to say more. Besides, no matter how politically important this team is, what with both him and Naruto on it - he really needs to do some digging on Haruno, there’s no way she’s there by chance - Hatake can still fail them. Sasuke has no reason to tell him anything until he’s sure that this team is going to be an actual thing.

“My name is Uchiha Sasuke,” Sasuke tells the jounin. “I like and dislike a lot of things. My hobbies are varied. As for dreams, no, more of an ambition…” He pauses, considering. There’s no real reason to withhold that information. “I want to be a jounin.”

Then kill Danzo .

Hatake raises a brow at him, looking faintly surprised at the answer. Sasuke isn’t sure what he was expecting - maybe for him to claim loud and clear that he wanted Danzo’s head on a spike? Who knows. Next to him, Haruno is looking unnervingly at him, like Sasuke said something weird or profound, and Naruto looks bored and confused.

Shisui’s ice-cold hand goes through Sasuke’s shoulder, making him shiver. Sasuke appreciates the silent support, and absently covers the ghostly hand with his own, uncaring of Hatake’s gaze on him.

“Okay,” Hatake says, after a beat, “And finally the girl.”

Thank the gods, Sasuke thinks, when the attention is gone from him.

The relief is short lived, however, as Haruno starts her own introduction with a lot of blushing and squirming, trailing off in her words as she glances at him. Sasuke avoids her eyes, turning away to try and give her some false sense of privacy - it’s obvious that she doesn’t want to say anything about herself in front of him, likely because he comes across as weird.

“Oh man, they start young ,” Shisui cackles, from his spot at Sasuke’s shoulder.

Sasuke twitches in confusion, but doesn’t reply otherwise. He’s giving up on his cousin’s weird behavior.

“What I dislike,” Haruno finally concludes, with a firmer tone, “is Naruto!”

Naruto wilts, and Sasuke lets out a small confused sigh, glancing at him, then at Haruno. Why only Naruto? She obviously dislikes Sasuke too. Is she trying to make Hatake-san think that she isn’t weirded out by the last Uchiha? That’d be a reasonable explanation. Smart of her, too.

“Alright,” Hatake-san says, “That’s enough for the introductions. Now, for tomorrow…”

What follows is the most unsettling reminder of the way genin team tests work that Sasuke has ever heard. Hatake doesn’t even mention the genin corps, instead telling them about going back to the Academy and a whole other lot of bullshit. It’s most likely as a scare tactic - while joining the genin corps is a bad option, compared to being in a genin team, it’s still viable. It’s also far preferable to going back to the Academy, with younger children still learning how to do a Kawarimi properly.

The way he frames it, complete with unsettling giggles and threatening blank look, as well as instructions not to eat unless they want to throw up - which is alarming on its own, honestly - causes all of them, even the careless Naruto, to tense up.

“The details are on this paper,” Hatake concludes, passing out three pages. “Don’t be late tomorrow.”

And with this last piece of hypocrisy, the man vanishes in a swirl of leaves yet again.

Sasuke huffs out an aggravated breath, and stands up, putting the paper in his pocket to read later. He leaves Naruto and Haruno behind him.

The moment he’s out of their hearing, and with confirmation that Hatake isn’t anywhere near, listening in, Sasuke turns to his cousin grimly. The time has come for serious discussions.

“Really?” He says flatly. “ Him? ”

“Okay, no, listen,” Shisui protests, puffing up, “In my defense, he’s a whole different man during missions!”

Sasuke makes a dubious noise.

Shisui floats in front of him, and takes him by the shoulders, expression serious.

“Listen, Sasuke,” he says gravely. “Love is blind.”

Sasuke feels he’s entirely justified in his reaction of walking through his cousin and ignoring him for the rest of the way home.

The backyard of Great Uncle Kagami’s house feels peaceful in the late evening hours, dusted with fading pinks and purples. Great Uncle Kagami himself isn’t here, having left to do whatever he does with his days when he’s not with Tobirama-sensei. It leaves Sasuke alone with his teacher, some of the nerves he’d had before meeting his new team coming back with a vengeance.

He has no clue what Tobirama-sensei wants to tell him, except that it has to do with the scroll Naruto stole, and he dislikes that. Dislikes having so little information.

“I apologize for keeping you from your family this evening, Sasuke,” Tobirama tells him, when they’re both settled in the grass. He looks, as always, far more like an apparition than any other ghost, but never more so than he does at this moment, pale and luminescent in the fading evening light. “I’m sure you would have liked to celebrate with them.”

“I already celebrated plenty yesterday,” Sasuke tells him, waving away his apology with a shake of his head. “Besides, my team isn’t yet finalized. The test is tomorrow.”

“I suppose,” Tobirama-sensei allows, and smiles, a small but genuine thing. “In that case, allow me to congratulate you officially on your graduation. I know you will become an incredible shinobi, and this is the first step towards that.”

“Thank you,” Sasuke says, feeling himself inexplicably flushing at the praise.

Tobirama-sensei isn’t shy with his praises, and he’s never made Sasuke feel like he’s not talented or competent or hard working enough. He’s never made Sasuke feel like he’s not enough ever . But he’s not effusive with compliments either, always fair to a fault with his teachings and his comments.

This, so unprompted, feels precious, and Sasuke tucks it close to his heart.

Beyond his family, no one has ever truly believed in him so genuinely.

“Of course,” the Nidaime continues, smile going into something flatly amused, “that road is going to be long and difficult, starting with the genin test tomorrow, and the D-ranks you will have to do afterwards, no matter the outcome of the test.”

Sasuke immediately groans, resisting the urge to grimace and pull at his face like a child. Oh he knows all about the test and the D-ranks. His cousins and other relatives have regalled him with many stories about those. The genin test obviously has him apprehensive, because every test is different, dependent on the jounin teaching the team, so Sasuke cannot really know what to expect. But the worst part is certainly the D-ranks.

Because no matter what, even if Sasuke fails or succeeds in the test, in a genin team or in the genin corps, he’s going to end up doing D-ranks for at least six months. Minimum.

Needless to say, he’s not looking forward to it.

He’s heard from Izumi that there’s a cat out there that has been escaping the Daimyo for generations. Rumour has it that it’s the same cat, used for D-ranks since the founding of the village. Of course, Sasuke doesn’t believe that, since he has asked Tobirama-sensei about the founding of the village, and the Academy and the mission ranking systems, especially the D-ranks made with genins in mind, were not implemented until well into the Nidaime’s tenure.

But he believes the tales about the damn cat. Because every ghost he asks agrees on it, and ghosts can’t lie with any sort of reliability.

And that’s not mentioning the other D-ranks.

Sasuke doesn’t have any ability to see the future, but he still foresees himself getting bored of painting fences, walking dogs and weeding gardens in less than a month.

Tobirama-sensei’s amused smile only grows with Sasuke’s scowl at the thought, though.

“I’m sure it won’t be that bad,” he says, sounding far too amused to be entirely comforting. “Your teacher should find your team relevant exercises to make those missions bearable, if not interesting.”

“What can he even teach me that you haven’t?” Sasuke asks, feeling petulant.

“There remains a lot that you haven’t learned,” Tobirama tells him, a little sterner now. “What I taught you are the very basics, and some very specific things that you won’t find a use for in most missions. Your jounin-sensei will fill the gaps in your education, and will, more importantly, teach you how to apply your skills in a mission, when working with a team.” He pauses, watching patiently as Sasuke takes his words and reluctantly accepts them, and adds, simply, “A living team.”

Sasuke makes a face but nods reluctantly, acknowledging the point.

It is his biggest issue - except for the Taijutsu lessons in the Academy, he has never put any of his knowledge or skills to use against or with living opponents and allies. And for all of his talent, well, Tobirama-sensei is still as dead as they come. He cannot teach him this, as much as Sasuke wishes he could.

He doesn’t want a new teacher.

No matter how amazing Hatake is supposed to be.

Or that, apparently, he’s got the sharingan - obviously the reason he was chosen to be Sasuke’s team’s sensei, since, as far as anyone knows, Sasuke has no one to teach him how to use his family’s bloodline if he awakens it. When. When he awakens it.

But that’s the thing - Sasuke doesn’t need anyone to teach him his family’s bloodline when he’s got his mother, and he certainly doesn’t need anyone other than Tobirama-sensei to teach him anything amazing . No one is as amazing as Tobirama-sensei.

Saying so, though, would probably be childish, and the idea of telling Tobirama-sensei his opinion on the matter makes Sasuke want to die in mortification. So he doesn’t, keeping the sentiment locked behind his teeth, no matter how much he hates lying.

“Your team will keep you busy,” Tobirama-sensei says, when it’s clear that Sasuke won’t say anything, sounding so certain that Sasuke will have a team, will succeed in tomorrow’s test that it warms him to the core, “So I’m not sure you would like to continue the lessons with me.”

“Of course I would like to continue lessons with you, sensei,” Sasuke immediately replies, straightening in bewilderment. “You know so much! I’ve learned more with you than I have with any other teacher.”

“I suspect that no other teacher has had private lessons with you either,” Tobirama says, fairly. He still seems faintly pleased when all Sasuke does is scowl at him. “But if you still want me to teach you, then I would like to offer to teach you something a little unconventional. Something that I don’t think your jounin-sensei will have the time to cover, and that is easily explained as self-taught.”

“What is it?” Sasuke asks, back straight with excitement this time.

“Seals,” Tobirama tells him. He smiles. “The Academy has taught you how to make a basic storage scroll, but I doubt they went into the theory behind it, and how to make anything more complicated than an explosive tag.”

“They haven’t,” Sasuke confirms, eyes wide. Something clicks in his head, “Is that why you’ve been pestering me so much about my calligraphy?”

“In part,” Tobirama-sensei admits, nodding. “Although having a good penmanship is important for many things other than seals, as well. Cyphers, impersonating people, forgery, undercover missions, there’s plenty that depends on writing.”

Sasuke nods, admitting the point. That much is true enough, and he should have thought about it. Any skill is important to a shinobi.

“The other important component of sealing is chakra,” Tobirama-sensei goes on. He’s got his teaching voice on. “We’ve talked previously about chakra natures, elements, and how they affect jutsus, and how they affect seals. We will go more in depth about that later, because it’s very important to know about it before doing any actual sealing work, lest something explodes in your face.”

“Does that happen often?” Sasuke wonders.

“More than I’d like,” Tobirama-sensei says, a wry edge to his voice telling Sasuke there’s many stories there. He grins, and makes a note to ask about them later. Tobirama-sensei huffs, and ignores him. “Chakra control is just as important. Activating a seal demands a certain amount, and it’s important to know exactly how much, and how to apply it. Using too little chakra simply makes the seal inefficient, if not a dud, while using too much overloads the seal and often ends up, once again, with an explosion.”

Sasuke can’t help but grin anew at this. He feels like the Nidaime has had many explosive incidents in his past that he hasn’t told anyone about, and he can’t wait to know about them. It sounds hilarious.

He forces himself into a semblance of attentive seriousness when his teacher sends him a flat look, though, forcing himself to actually absorb the words and warnings.

As funny as the thought of his teacher accidentally causing explosions while he was making one of the many jutsus he invented is, Sasuke can see how making himself explode could be bad. For his health.

If he died like that, Shisui would never let him forget it.

“So, calligraphy, chakra nature and chakra control,” he repeats dutifully. Hesitantly, he asks, “Is my control not good enough?”

“Your control is fine,” Tobirama waves that worry away. “I believe your jounin sensei will start you on water walking soon, after he assesses your abilities to walk on walls. Once you’ve mastered that, the basic seals won’t be an issue to use. Your teacher should also teach you about your affinity properly. So I’ll leave that much to him, while we work on the theory first.”

Sasuke nods, finding that completely reasonable. He waits for the rest, but Tobirama-sensei doesn’t continue talking.

In fact, worryingly, his shape seems to falter for a second while Sasuke watches.

Sasuke’s eyes go wide, instantly on alert. He’s never seen Tobirama’s ghost flicker. Ever. He’s one of the most controlled, stable ghosts Sasuke has ever seen. He’s never shown anyone his death wounds, and even when thoughtful or distracted he never loses his form the way Shisui will.

Even when Sasuke had lost his temper over Kushina’s first, ill-thought-out plan, he hadn’t appeared any more frazzled or staticky to Sasuke.

So whatever is going on, it’s important.

Or something’s wrong.

Worry grows, sharp in his gut.

“Sensei?” He asks, slowly. “Is something the matter?”

Tobirama’s eyes snap to him, and his form remains solid, never wavering. Sasuke catches himself wondering if he even saw that tiny falter correctly. Perhaps he’s just too tired.

“Forgive me,” Tobirama says, pursing his lips. “There is something I wanted to talk to you about, other than sealing. It’s related, to some extent, but it’s… Far different. Far more dangerous. And, well.” He pauses, obviously mulling over the proper words. Sasuke waits. Eventually, the Nidaime forges on. “It’s an important thing to me. Something I’ve never considered teaching anyone while alive, and certainly never thought that I’d teach while dead. And truthfully, even now I’m not sure if I should offer.”

He looks at Sasuke, intent. Sasuke looks back, his nerves settling slowly with relief.

There’s nothing wrong.

Ghosts have things that unsettle them, like everyone. Things that matter, things that upset, things that they feel too much about even in death. Sasuke sees a lot of it in his clan, simply because Uchihas as a whole feel far too much in general, and that translates in death. But all ghosts have moments like this.

It’s simply that Tobirama is usually so unbothered by anything, even the hatred that most of Sasuke’s family shows him causing no reaction, that Sasuke forgets sometimes that his teacher is like all of them.

Still holding his gaze steadily, the Senju speaks again.

“During my lifetime I invented many techniques, and a lot of them were deemed unnatural, cruel, or simply too powerful to be used either by inexperienced shinobi or, worse, by enemies,” Tobirama explains. “Many of them, some incomplete, have been written and sealed in a forbidden jutsu scroll, never to be seen again.”

“The kinjutsu scroll that Naruto stole,” Sasuke guesses, having already thought that the topic would come up today.

“Your teammate didn’t have time, and certainly not the ability, to learn more than one of my jutsus, the shadow clone,” Tobirama tells him. His lips thin. “Thankfully, too, as many of those are far too dangerous for a genin, no matter if they have a Bijuu in their guts. The others might be accessible to someone with that large of a chakra capacity, but dangerous simply because no unseasoned genin should know them, let alone use them.”

Sasuke nods, fighting a shudder as he imagines the chaos Naruto will bring with the shadow clone jutsu already. He doesn’t want to know what else he could have learned, and the consequences.

Tobirama doesn’t stop looking at him.

“One of the forbidden techniques written on that scroll, one of the very first I created and possibly the one that is deemed the most unnatural of all, is the Edo Tensei,” he tells Sasuke, gravely. “The ability to bring back the dead.”

Sasuke forgets how to breathe.

The ability to bring back the dead?

His first instinct is to reject it as impossible. Nothing brings back the dead. His own ability to see ghosts is a miserable compromise to this rule, one that he has accepted long ago.

How many years has Sasuke spent, wishing that his ability would extend at least to touching? So that he could feel his mother’s embrace again? So that his father could ruffle his hair? So that he could feel Shisui bowling him over, and could tackle him in return?

His lungs are screaming.

He takes a shuddering breath.

“What’s the catch?” He asks.

Because surely there is one. If one could bring back the dead, no matter how dangerous or forbidden the jutsu, people would have used it. Sasuke would be the first in line, but he bets many others would have. Shinobis do not live long lives. Many of them would probably do a lot to get back their fallen friends and families.

“It’s incomplete as it is on the scroll,” Tobirama tells him freely enough. “I alone know the entire process. I wrote just enough of it down that, in the event that it would be necessary, my successor could figure out how to use it. Perhaps not fully, not to its full potential, but still use it.”

“What else?” Sasuke asks.

“It’s not permanent,” Tobirama says. Of course it isn’t, Sasuke thinks, heart painful in his chest, but he doesn’t need permanent. He’d settle for five minutes. The Nidaime goes on, “Like any summoning, for it is a variant of it, it’s dependent on the chakra poured into it. The more powerful the person, the more chakra it requires. The longer the person stays, the more chakra you’ll need to spend. And if you need to control them, if it’s an enemy, the process is even more difficult.”

“But they can be summoned several times?” Sasuke asks. When Tobirama nods, he scowls. “What else?”

“The Edo Tensei doesn’t bring back people at their full power, nor fully the way they were once alive,” Tobirama answers, slowly. “They are still corpses. More fragile, in a way, than living people, but unable to feel pain. Still able to fight, and to do everything else, but unfortunately not for long.”

“What else?” Sasuke repeats. His voice lands too sharp but he can’t bring himself to care, not with this. “There must be some issue with it if no one else- no one else-”

He cuts himself off, eyes burning. Tobirama’s demeanor gentles, just a little around the edges. There’s something melancholic about the way he looks at Sasuke.

“And this,” he says, “Is why I think I can teach it to you. Most people deemed the jutsu an abomination. Sacrilege. To bring people back, and to use them? Desecrate someone’s grave to fight a battle in your stead? Using corpses ? Even those of your enemies? It was not the sort of jutsu anyone wanted to use, even during war time.”

“But it’s them, right?” Sasuke asks, a little desperately now. “The person you summon? It’s them?”

“Yes, Sasuke,” Tobirama-sensei says, sadly. “It’s them.”

Then who cares? Sasuke wants to cry out. He would do so much, so much just for the chance to be able to hold his mother’s hand one last time. No matter if she’s just a cold corpse. He’s seen that already. He still does, sometimes, when she’s upset.

He doesn’t care. He doesn’t care if it gives him five minutes at most. He doesn’t want to use the jutsu to fight, no matter what it was made for. He doesn’t require that long, really.

Just a second.

Just enough for his mother to hold him.

He looks at his teacher, at his sharingan red eyes that aren’t sharingans. At his pale figure, so fitting in death. At his expression, the understanding melancholy there. Sasuke thinks that perhaps his teacher didn’t invent the jutsu to fight either, not at first.

He can’t bring himself to ask who the Senju wanted back so fiercely that he defied nature, though. Not now.

Sasuke clenches his fists, tight, and looks at his teacher with the most desperate of determination.

“Can you teach me?” Sasuke asks, instead.

“If you work hard, and diligently, and learn all the fuuinjutsu I deem necessary, I will ,” Tobirama says. Sasuke’s heart climbs up to his throat. His teacher smiles. “You’ll have to make chuunin first, though. I told you - I won’t leave the technique in the hands of an unseasoned genin.”

“That’s fine,” Sasuke says, and can’t help the way his determination shifts, from desperate to elated, a hope so joyful filling him it leaves him almost breathless again, grinning, “I’ll do it. You’ll see!”

Tobirama smiles back, eyes still sad and yet so warm.

“I guess we’ll see,” he says.

Chapter Text

The less said about the genin team test, the better. Sasuke has no idea how they even managed to pass it, especially given the spirit of it. Naruto, Haruno and him have no teamwork. Not a drop of it.

Sure, they gave Naruto some food, but that was hardly proof that they could work together. It was basic human decency.

Two weeks after that particular disaster, and Sasuke is more than ready to march himself up to the Hokage tower and demand to integrate the genin corp. Forget having a team and a competent jounin-sensei, Sasuke will be better served on his own. It’s not like his team and his teacher help , really.

D-ranks suck , for sure, but it’s made worse by the fact that they have to work together to do them, and none of them are able to stay cordial for even five seconds. Naruto spends his time either doing the assigned tasks wrong , or not doing them because he’s distracted by trying to befriend Haruno and annoying Sasuke. In turn, while Haruno is actually competent at basic chores, she’s far too easily distracted by Naruto’s mistakes or Sasuke’s entire self , shouting at the first at every turn and unable to work with him without losing her words and her composure and thus making mistakes.

Sasuke will admit, though only to himself, that he’s not exempt from guilt in the wreck that is their team. He’s not exactly trying to create bridges between them, and he certainly avoids Haruno as much as possible and gets annoyed too easily by Naruto.

He swears, though, that Hatake is the one with the most blame in the situation.

Oh, he’s a skilled jounin, no question about that. The test certainly had reinforced that impression - the only reason Sasuke had managed to get a bell was because Hatake hadn’t expected him to be above the usual genin-graduate level, and he’d stolen it back from Sasuke way too fast for his peace of mind.

But it has nothing to do with the man’s skill as a shinobi.

The man simply shouldn’t be a teacher.

Not only does he have no notion of authority, and putting down rules for teamwork, he also doesn’t teach them anything. No teamwork exercises, not a hint of chakra control, not a single jutsu. The man just shows up in the morning, gives them a D-rank, and leaves them to it while reading porn on the sidelines.

That is, if he actually shows up in the morning and not in the afternoon.

“Why is he always late?!” Haruno cries to the heavens, spooking a bird from a nearby tree.

“That perverted old man!” Naruto agrees, screaming along, shaking his fist towards the sky.

Sasuke twitches but, beyond a look at his teammates and surroundings - in case a miracle happens and Hatake decides to drop by - doesn’t move. Sighing, he tries to tune them out and to keep reading the large scroll draped over his legs.

They, as always, keep shouting, making it much harder than it has to be.

Like every damn morning.

Sasuke hates them.

He hates Hatake just a little more, though. Maybe if the man wasn’t an utter failure of a teacher, things would be at least a little bearable.

At this rate he’s not going to be able to make chuunin in the next century. Let alone jounin.

“I don’t get what Shisui sees in him,” he grumbles under his breath.

“You tell me,” Kushina grumbles much more audibly from above his shoulder.

Sasuke sends her a look, and they both grimace. This is the state of Sasuke’s life - he and Kushina are actually almost getting along because of this bullshit. Oh, she’s still insufferable, and she still insists that he talk to Naruto every single day, and he still tells her no, but most of her darker moods are no longer directed at him, and instead at Hatake.

And Rin, apparently, but Kushina isn’t talking about her and Sasuke doesn’t want to ask. The girl herself has yet to make another appearance since she ran from Kushina that first time.

“I mean, he used to be cute,” Kushina goes on, wrinkling her nose. Her eyes are bruise purple, glowing far too much to be natural. “I don’t know what happened since I died.”

“You died,” Sasuke points out. “That happened.”

Kushina’s entire shape shivers and shakes, hair floating up and eyes going red behind her snarling kitsune mask. Sasuke forces himself to keep breathing steadily, even in the face of echoing bells.

He keeps his eyes on the scroll.

Eventually, like the receding tide, Kushina’s grief and anger quiets, leaving her almost normal again. She hovers over him, staring at Naruto from a distance, then looks down at him. He can feel her eyes on his neck.

“You should teach him fuuinjutsu,” she says.

“To Naruto?” Sasuke hisses, sending her a look. “Yeah, right . Even if I wanted to, and I don’t, he’ll never agree.”

“If you made more efforts,” Kushina starts.

“Teamwork,” Sasuke cuts her off tensely, “requires effort from everyone . Don’t start blaming me alone for this mess.”

Kushina growls, low and echoing, but tellingly she doesn’t retort. For all of her willfulness and her huge, Naruto-shaped soft spot, she’s not blind. There’s not a single person in team seven that is trying to mend whatever they are supposed to be. Not even her own son.

Sasuke tried, at the very beginning. Offered to give Naruto pointers. Gave Haruno space from him like she obviously wants. But Naruto just took offense to some perceived slight, and Haruno is still unable to look too long in his direction without starting to squirm and make faces.

And Hatake, true to form, is simply useless.

The man hasn’t even mentioned his sharingan to Sasuke.

Sighing again, Sasuke turns back to his scroll on sealing. He can’t do anything else, so he’s been bringing reading materials every morning to complement his lessons with Tobirama-sensei in the evening. At this point, it’s the only moment in the day he looks forward to - his lessons with his ghostly teacher.

The promise Tobirama made, to teach him the Edo Tensei once he makes chuunin, is the only reason Sasuke hasn’t snapped yet. It keeps him going.

But he swears, if nothing changes, he’s not sure he’ll manage to get to chuunin at all. There’s no progress to be made in this situation.

That’s why he needs to learn all he can during these self-imposed study sessions.

“Explain this to me,” he tells Kushina curtly.

“Wh- Why should I?” Kushina splutters at him.

“Because we both need a distraction,” Sasuke scoffs at her. He glances over at where Naruto has abandoned shouting and is now brawling with a shadow clone of himself, while Haruno berates him. “Besides, if one day he actually wants to learn from me, then I need to know enough to teach him, don’t I?”

“We both know you have no intention of helping him,” Kushina says, but she’s wavering. “You don’t care about him.”

Sasuke bites down the instinctive retort to that. Of course he doesn’t care about Naruto. He doesn’t know the boy well enough, and he’s certainly made no effort to endear himself to Sasuke. He certainly doesn’t like him. But that doesn’t mean that he doesn’t want to help.

Understanding and pity, however, only go so far. Sasuke doesn’t care enough about his teammate to spill secrets that would see him dead, or worse.

No one will avenge his clan if he gets himself stupidly carted off to T&I because he told Naruto about things that he’s not supposed to know. Especially since right now, Naruto wouldn’t know to keep his damn mouth shut. But, well.

“Unfortunately, we’re stuck on the same team,” Sasuke tells Kushina. “So in the end, there’s no choice. Either they accept that we all need help, and we get that help, from Hatake or each other. Or we stay genins our entire life.” He pauses. “Or worse. If we’re sent on a mission at our current level? We both know the risks.”

Kushina bristles. But she doesn’t have anything to say. She knows he’s right. Even Sasuke would probably die if he were sent on a mission and encountered enemy shinobi above genin level.

“I can’t teach him if he’s unwilling,” Sasuke tells her simply. “But you can teach me enough that I can actually help save his hide if there’s a need for it one day.”

“Fine,” she growls. “Show me.”

Sasuke hides a twitch of his lips.

Not everything is beyond saving, it seems.

Because Sasuke can’t have nice things, Rin comes back.

Now don’t get him wrong. She’s a nice girl, calm and polite, even if the way she wears her death on her chest so obviously is unsettling. Sasuke likes her well enough.

It bothers Kushina, though, for some reason that Sasuke doesn’t exactly understand. In itself it’s not an issue either, the way Rin herself is not an issue, but it makes her weird. More prone to letting her shape change. More irritable.

It throws the uneasy cooperation she and Sasuke had reached into chaos.

Eventually it becomes so bad that Sasuke has to call off the sealing advice and pseudo-lessons she’s giving him.

“Look,” he tells her in hushed hisses, thankfully going unnoticed by either his teammates or Hatake, “Either you and her have a talk, a proper talk about whatever is going on between you two, or I’ll have to ban you both from being near me while you’re together.”

And he bets that won’t go over well. From what he’s gathered, Rin was actually Hatake’s teammate, during her lifetime. Their third was an Uchiha, Obito, the one that gave Hatake his sharingan.

Which, Sasuke certainly has opinions on that, as do many grannies in the clan when he asks them about it, but he’s not about to judge his long-dead cousin for having shit taste in men. Not when maybe Hatake was better when Obito was alive.

And not when Shisui is right there to be bullied freely about his own shitty taste, while Obito is unfortunately not.

Apparently, he’s the Uchiha that Rin has been looking for all those years.

Anyway, trying to get Rin to leave her last living teammate alone would be a dick move. Just as asking Kushina to leave Naruto’s side. So, well, Sasuke really would like to avoid doing that.

“I get that it’s awkward,” Sasuke continues, a bit awkward himself, when Kushina doesn’t reply. “Your husband was her jounin teacher, you must have known her very well-”

“That’s not it,” Kushina cuts him off, shape flickering. Mask on. Mask off.

“Then what is it?” Sasuke hisses, patience slowly running thin.

“She’s just-”

“I had a Bijuu sealed in me without proper barriers between my soul and his,” Rin says, startling both of them.

She giggles at their reaction, raising a hand in front of her mouth. Her mirth makes her look years younger. Given how young she already is, it’s uncomfortable.

“Sorry,” she says, “I couldn’t help but eavesdrop.”

“Right,” Sasuke says, trying to forcefully calm down his heartbeat.

“That’s why Kushina-san is uncomfortable with me,” Rin goes on. “As a former Jinchuuriki herself, she can feel it. The trace it left on my soul. In a way, a part of the Three Tails died with me. A part of his soul still clings to mine.”

Sasuke will take her word for it. Maybe, he reflects, that’s why she still floats around with that gaping hole in her chest. Because that’s not just her death wound, but the death wound of an ancient creature so powerful it left a scar of its own on her very soul.

Weirder things have happened.

“It’s not that,” Kushina attempts to protest and, when met with two stares, sighs aggressively, “Okay so that’s part of it! But that’s- There’s-”

“Do you want us to go further away?” Rin cuts in, not unkindly.

Sasuke isn’t sure who she’s asking. He nods regardless, relieved to see that at least one of them is responsible enough. Kushina nods as well, and floats after Rin, until they are both way above the tree line - where they have a clear view of the entire team, and their porn-reading so-called- teacher .

With them gone, he’s free to focus back on his task.

Namely, painting yet another fence.

Sasuke sighs.

He can’t wait for the day D-ranks are no longer something he needs to worry about.

“You should be kinder to the boy,” Rin tells Kushina, watching the living team seven from above. “He’s a kind soul.”

Kushina scoffs, crossing her arms. Rin glances at her, but finds that she’s gone back to changing forms irritably. Typical Uzushio ghost, really, and Rin would bet that being a past jinchuuriki doesn’t help with all the emotions that she’s retained. Rin certainly knows that it hasn’t helped with her emotional state.

Her death feels fresh, still, despite the years that have gone by, a coat of paint in the colour of her own blood that never dried.

Maybe Kushina feels the same.

“He tried to help me find Obito,” she tells Kushina, when the older woman fails to say anything in return. It’s a long shot, but- “Have you seen him anywhere?”

“No,” Kushina says, and sighs. She settles a little, looking human once more, and almost tired. She reaches up, as if to rub at her face, a useless habit to retain, “No, out of everyone, I’ve only seen you, and Kakashi. A few others, for sure, but-”

She trails off. Rin hums, understanding. Kushina had come back to the village years after her death, to find things changed beyond recognition. It’s a difficult adjustment for anyone.

Rin knows it well.

Some days, bad days, she can’t recognize Kakashi until she sees his sharingan, until he channels lightning chakra, and she hears a thousand birds chirping through her soul. He’s changed a lot, Kakashi. Not in the best of ways.

Though, he’s doing better out of Anbu.

Rin’s glad that he’s trying something new. Although…

Looking down, team seven is a mess. It brings back memories. Her team seven was a mess too, similar in that way. Rin just hopes, for their sake, for the sake of Kakashi’s well-being, that it won’t take the same sort of tragedy and loss for them to learn how to work together.

“Sasuke told me that Obito might have moved on,” Rin tells Kushina, after a moment. “But I don’t think so. With his eye still in use, with the legacy he left for Kakashi- He would have stuck around to watch it, wouldn’t he?”

“I don’t know,” Kushina says. She sounds bitter, “He wouldn’t be the first to disappoint us. Where’s Sakumo, Rin?”

Rin presses her lips tight. She’d asked herself, and other ghosts, the same question years ago. For, surely, surely Kakashi’s father had all the reasons to stick around his son as a ghost.

Yet the White Fang never showed, and very quickly Rin had had to accept the fact that she was Kakashi’s only ghost.

“He moved on,” Rin says. “Before I got there.”

“Typical,” Kushina snarls. “Of course he did. Family seems to mean less these days.”

Rin glances at her.

“Minato-sensei,” Rin starts.

“Not Minato, Minato did what he had to,” Kushina says. “He did his duty, he did the best he could.”

She sounds, absurdly, like she believes it. Rin doesn’t comment on it, even if she disagrees. It’s not her place to tell the man’s wife about her husbands’ many mistakes.

Rin doesn’t blame many people for many things. Death puts all in perspective.

She used to, though.

Some part of her, younger and forever stuck with her first love and teammate’s arm stuck in her chest, will never forget, nor forgive, the fate that she was dealt, and the people that helped it along. She used to hate Minato, for how he failed in his duties as a teacher, as a surrogate father for her team. For how he failed Obito, then Kakashi, then her, then Kakashi again.

Some days, when Kakashi has trouble even waking up and getting out of bed, when the sight of his own reflection sends him heaving into a toilet bowl, Rin still hates Minato for that.

But she’s seen a lot now, and Minato’s long dead. Rin has learned patience. She’s had her edges smoothed out by the sands of time.

She won’t tell Kushina what she thinks about the fact that her husband left his son alone too, left Kushina too by sealing his own soul away.

“Then who?” Rin asks mildly.

“Hiruzen,” Kushina spits out, and then, harshly, “And Kakashi. Even- Mikoto swore to me, and yet-”

“You know they couldn’t do anything against the hokage’s decree,” Rin interrupts her before she can get too emotional. “They tried.”

“Mikoto tried, yes,” Kushina agrees, calming down some. She scowls down. “But Kakashi-”

“He tried too,” Rin interrupts her, sharply. She can feel her own temper rising, like a flood, and has to take a moment to let it filter back down, drain back into the soil. “You weren’t there, Kushina. You have no idea how it was for Kakashi all these years, alone. He tried, in his own way.”

“Right,” Kushina says, and takes a moment to calm down as well. “But still. No one helped. Naruto has been alone too, and he still is . He’s got a team, but look at them! None of them try to even- even-!” She snarls. “Even Sasuke! He can see us, can hear us! And he does nothing with this! He could-”

She’s getting worked up. Too worked up.

Rin, with a sigh, paints her tails into existence. One swings, catches Kushina over the head, hard.

Kushina goes down, surprised. When she rights herself again, she looks at Rin - and flinches, at the sight of her, no doubt. She’d never seen Rin like this, when alive. Rin herself had no time to be like this, when alive.

All that she is, all that she learned to be with that echo of a bijuu staining her soul, came after.

Rin lets the tails fade, lets the marks of a jinchuuriki fade as well, and floats down to her sensei’s wife. The woman that, once upon a time, she had considered almost a sister. Kushina probably never realized what she meant to the girl Rin was.

“Kushina,” Rin tells her, firmly, “Sasuke doesn’t owe you anything. He doesn’t owe anyone anything.”

“Wh-” Kushina starts, eyes wide.

“Sasuke,” Rin continues, staring her down, “is a child. A child with powers we’ve never seen, certainly, but a child nonetheless. A child who, I bet, would trade these powers in a heartbeat if it meant getting his family back.” She looks at Kushina, sympathetically. “He too, lost his mother.”

“He can see her, though,” Kushina argues immediately, “He knows she’s here, that she loves him! Naruto-”

“Naruto isn’t the only child who has lost his parents, and he won’t be the last, and Sasuke can’t run around comforting every orphan in existence,” Rin says, gently and yet firmly. “Think about this, Kushina. Telling Naruto that his mother is here isn’t going to help when he can’t see you, or hear you. It’ll just be cruel.”

Kushina flickers, looking inhuman for a moment. Then, with a snarl that sounds more like a wail, she vanishes. Rin looks around, searching for her, but she’s nowhere to be seen. Not even by Naruto’s side.

Sighing, and feeling a little bit guilty, Rin slowly floats back towards Sasuke.

He’s almost done painting the fence.

“Didn’t go well?” Sasuke asks her, in that quiet way of his. Rin glances over at where the others are. As always, no one notices the child talking to himself. When she looks back, Sasuke is looking at her knowingly, “Don’t worry, she’ll come back. She gets upset easily.”

“I know,” Rin says, and smiles at him. He’s a sweet kid. “She’ll get better, you’ll see.”

Sasuke snorts.

“Well, that’d be grand,” he mutters.

“Does she ask you to talk to Naruto a lot?” Rin asks.

Sasuke sighs, nodding. When Rin doesn’t press or ask more, he slowly, hesitantly admits everything to her. How much Kushina has been pestering him since she learned he could see and hear her. That one incident - and oh, Rin had felt it, the entire village ’s ghosts had felt it, all of them making themselves scarce in the wake of whatever it’d been, but she hadn’t known it was Kushina who’d caused it - and the following unease, all the arguments between Mikoto and Kushina. And then, more recently, that truce that Sasuke had struck with Kushina so she’d teach him fuuinjutsu.

Rin bites down a spike of annoyance. Oh, Kushina really deserved to be told off again.

“You know you don’t have to listen to her,” she tells Sasuke. “Naruto could use a friend, that’s true, but it doesn’t have to be you.”

“He doesn’t want it to be me,” Sasuke points out.

Yeah, he probably doesn’t. Rin eyes where Kakashi is holding Naruto up by the collar, sighing. There’s paint all over him.

“Regardless,” she says, shaking her head, “if I may give you advice? You guys are a team now. You will need to learn to work together. Otherwise…”

“Otherwise it’ll end up with one of us dead, probably”, Sasuke says, very blunt for a child his age. Then again, the dead are a part of his everyday life, “I know. I’m- I don’t know what I can do, on my own, to fix it.”

Rin hums, thinking about it. It’s true that given his team, he’s got his work cut out for him. And it hardly rests on his shoulders solely. The other two ought to make an effort as well.

The other two, however, don’t have the maturity that comes with seeing your entire family die in front of your eyes, and then having to live with the dead.

Rin knows how it was for her, decades ago.

She wouldn’t have had the first clue on how to fix her team. She hadn’t known there was anything to be fixed, really, until it was too late.

“Well,” she says, slowly, “A meal is always a start.”

“A meal?” Sasuke repeats, blinking. He makes a face, “Like, what, going to get ramen like Naruto’s always asking?”

“Why not?” Rin agrees. She smiles at the face he pulls. Ah, that sure brings back memories, “Look, at this point what your team needs is to actually spend some time together.”

“We spend time together everyday ,” Sasuke says, in an annoyed hiss.

“Not really, though,” Rin points out. “You wait together on opposite ends of a field. You paint different parts of a fence. You never really spend time close together. You don’t talk.”

Sasuke doesn’t answer. Still, he looks thoughtful. Like he’s considering what she’s saying.

That’s all Rin is asking for, really.

“Anyway,” she says, after a while, “want me to tell you about Kakashi when we were genin?”

“Oh, yes ,” Sasuke says, and he gives a small, almost evil grin. “Please. Do tell.”

Rin giggles, and starts talking.

It’s nice, she reflects. She’d missed talking to people.

Rin’s words stay in his mind for the following evening, and then the next day. She has a point. Being stubborn is well and good, but in the end it’ll get them killed. Sasuke can train all he wants, if he can't trust his team at all then it’s worthless.

Still, lunch? Sasuke doesn’t know if he’ll be able to stand having a full lunch with his teammates.

He talks to his mother about it, and she laughs at him, though not unkindly.

“Well, it doesn’t have to be a meal,” she eventually says. “You can simply try to find something in common. Talk about it while you wait.”

“We don’t have anything in common,” Sasuke groans. “Naruto is an idiot, and Haruno- I don’t understand Haruno at all.”

“That’s what this is for, though, isn’t it?” Mikoto points out, smiling. “To get to know both of them better, and figure out what you share.”

Sasuke genuinely doesn’t know what they could share. Mikoto laughs at him again, and floats closer, amused.

“Tell me about them, your teammates,” she requests. “Anything you can think of.”

Sasuke sighs, but he does as she asks. Telling her of what they said during the introductions that Hatake had asked for is a good start, and has the added advantage of making his mother laugh again. She seems very amused with everything.

“Naruto is a lot like his mother, huh?” She comments. “Maybe Rin was right, you could just buy him ramen. I’m sure it’d earn his undying loyalty.”

“No one’s asking for that,” Sasuke immediately protests, grimacing.

“Of course,” Mikoto says, still amused, and hums, “Well, as for Haruno, she sounds like a sweet girl. Smart too. Maybe offering to study together? Help Naruto study?”

That sounds like hell to Sasuke. Still, it’s an idea. He could… offer Haruno some basic study scrolls? Would she like that? It can’t hurt to try.

Naruto, though, won’t take that sort of offer.

He hates studying.

Sasuke still isn’t going to buy him ramen, though.

“How about pictures?” Mikoto suddenly says.

She sounds uncertain and, when Sasuke glances up, looks hesitant as well. But she seems to straighten up, and nods to herself, before looking back at Sasuke, expectant.

“Pictures?” Sasuke asks.

“Of Kushina,” Mikoto says, and quickly raises a hand before Sasuke can do more than make a face. “I have a box of them, under a tatami in our bedroom. If I recall correctly, there should be one of them where she’s pregnant and I’m with you.”

Sasuke has never heard about it before. Though, of course, it makes sense. What would he have done with pictures of Kushina and his mother?

He follows her and lifts the tatami that she points out, retrieving a box there. It’s bigger than he thought, and heavier. A glance at his mother reveals a strange expression on her face. It looks a lot like nostalgia, if nostalgia was sadder. Carefully, Sasuke opens the box.

Inside, there’s not just a stack of pictures, but several, neatly kept separated and organized.

Sasuke glances again at his mother, but she doesn’t say anything, doesn’t tell him to look at a specific stack over another. She just hovers, waiting. She hasn’t been able to retrieve the pictures, nor look at them, ever since she died, Sasuke realizes suddenly. Whatever fond memories she captured on them, they’ve just been waiting here, gathering the dust, for her to mention them to him.

With gentle fingers, Sasuke lifts the first stack, and starts looking through it.

The first picture is one of Itachi and him, years younger, Sasuke a red-faced toddler in his brother’s arms.

Sasuke sucks in a deep breath.

Mikoto’s shape is a cloud of red and static in the corner of his eye.

Well, Sasuke thinks, setting the picture aside more gently than he feels it deserves, if only in respect for his mother’s raw expression, blood spilling over a terribly wan smile, her front dripping with red, that’s certainly a punch to the gut.

Hopefully the other pictures won’t be so painful.

Chapter Text

In spite of her desire to visit Sasuke during academy years, Sakura has never actually been to his house. There’s not much around this part of the village that would justify a visit, and it’s far from the academy building itself, so she has only seen the walls from a distance. So when Sasuke invites her and Naruto for dinner, she’s excited.

Of course, she would rather have been invited alone, but this is better than nothing! Dinner at Sasuke’s place is a dream come true!

Even Naruto’s grumbling can’t ruin this for her!

She tries to hold onto that feeling when they go through the huge door that leads into the compound itself.

The Uchiha Compound is bigger than she thought.

Or maybe it feels that way because it’s so quiet. And empty.

Sakura finds herself trailing behind Sasuke slowly, feeling like she’s disturbing the peace with every scuff of her shoe on the pavement. Even Naruto has gone silent, looking around with a strange expression on his face.

It’s one thing to know, logically, that Sasuke’s the last of his clan. It’s another thing to realize what it means.

Sakura never thought about it before, not really, and now she has to.

All these houses, big and beautiful and clean, have no one in them.

It’s that cleanliness especially that bothers Sakura. If the buildings were rundown and the bushes overgrown, maybe it’d feel more natural. But someone has bothered with the upkeep, and so it feels like at any moment people are going to appear, leave their houses to walk down the streets.

Except that can’t happen.

It’s…

“Creepy,” Naruto mutters, looking around suspiciously, his shoulders hiked up to his ears.

“Shhh!” Sakura hisses at him, smacking him.

Of course, she privately agrees. It’s very creepy. But in the heavy silence that sits over the empty streets, Naruto’s voice feels far too loud, his comment disrespectful.

Sakura hesitantly looks at Sasuke’s back. He’s looking less tense now than he was when he invited her and Naruto. Unlike them, he’s more comfortable here than not.

Of course he is.

This is his home.

Sakura wonders how he can live here. The quiet would drive her crazy.

Wind blows, sudden and whistling through the streets. Sakura shivers. She finds herself walking faster so she’s by Sasuke’s side instead of behind.

“Do you clean the streets yourself, Sasuke-kun?” She asks, trying to hide her unease behind a tremulous smile. “It’s all very-” she trails off. There’s eyes in one of the bushes, reflecting light. Her skin breaks into goosebumps, “Uh.”

Naruto, who quickly jogged up to keep pace, sees it as well and immediately blanches and scrambles behind her.

“Is that a ghost?!” He screeches, holding onto Sakura’s shoulders.

Sasuke, who’d turned to give Sakura his attention, startles badly and follows their gaze. He blinks, frowns, then makes a shooing motion.

For a second nothing moves. Then the eyes blink and Sasuke gives an ‘ah’ of understanding, relaxing.

“It’s a cat,” he tells them, and oh, that makes sense. Sakura deflates, feeling a bit stupid. “There’s lots of them around.”

“A cat?” Naruto says, straightening.

He immediately goes to the bush. He pokes at it with his foot, and yelps when the cat jumps out of the foliage, running away fast. Sakura barely has time to see white fur blur past before it’s gone, sprinting around the corner.

“That was Tsuki,” Sasuke says, staring after the cat. He huffs, “She gets scared easily.”

“Is she yours?” Sakura asks, eager to know more and especially to move past the awkward moment.

She thinks this is the most she’s ever talked to Sasuke, and certainly the most she’s ever heard him say outside of class. It’s nice.

“Ah, no,” Sasuke says, and looks away. Sakura thinks she annoyed him with her questioning right until he says, “She’s my cousin Izumi’s.”

“Oh,” Sakura says.

She opens her mouth, desperately searching for something to say. Nothing comes to her, and it’s awful. They’re not even at Sasuke’s house yet, and everything’s already going wrong.

Maybe she should ask about what’s for dinner? Would that be fine?

Of course, before she can, Naruto opens his big fat mouth and puts his foot right into it.

“Is she around? Your cousin?” Naruto asks. Sakura turns wide eyes to him, and Sasuke stares. Naruto scratches his head, “What?”

“Naruto! ” Sakura hisses at him, mortified.

“What? ” Naruto says, face scrunching up.

He can’t be serious. Is he joking? Now? About this?! Sakura gets ready to smack him, because it’s not funny, when Sasuke speaks up. He’s staring oddly at Naruto.

“My family’s dead,” he tells their blond teammate bluntly.

“Ah, I know! I know that!” Naruto says quickly, flailing, his cheeks darkening. So he does realize when he says something dumb! Sakura wasn't sure. He waves a hand, “But- You just said! The cat!”

Sakura narrows her eyes at him. Sasuke does the same, but then he seems to realize something because he sighs.

“I said that wrong,” Sasuke says. He adds, flatly, “Tsuki was my cousin Izumi’s cat.”

Eyes widening in understanding, Naruto nods, quickly. He still looks faintly confused and suspicious as he looks around.

“So no one lives here?” He asks slowly. “At all? ”

Sasuke looks like he’s regretting ever inviting them. Sakura wishes Naruto would stop talking.

“Yes,” Sasuke says sharply. Amends, “Just me.”

“But…” Naruto says.

Sakura elbows him hard.

“Shut the fuck up Naruto,” she growls.

“Owww, Sakura-chan!” He whines. “That hurts!”

Sakura ignores him, and walks faster to catch up to Sasuke. He isn’t waiting for them, and Sakura’s sure he wouldn’t actually leave them behind but she doesn’t want to get lost in this creepy ghost town.

“Don’t listen to him, Sasuke-kun,” she says when she reaches him. “Naruto’s just stupid.”

“Hey!” Naruto exclaims.

Sasuke frowns. Then, slowly, he shakes his head.

“No one explained it to him, probably,” he says. He turns to look at Naruto, and asks pointedly, “Right?”

Naruto puffs up his cheeks and crosses his arms, but he doesn't deny it.

Sasuke nods as if that’s explanation enough, and keeps walking.

That’s just stupid, though.

No one explained it to Sakura either, and she’s not asking dumb, insensitive questions, is she. It was all over school, years ago. Naruto was there. He can’t have missed the info.

She looks at him, glaring, but Naruto isn’t looking at her at all. He’s looking at the empty houses they’re passing by, with a look of slow, uncomfortable understanding.

Maybe, Sakura grudgingly admits to herself, he forgot. Or he never thought about it. Like, she thinks uncomfortably, Sakura herself didn't really think about it. She’s always been too focused on everything else about the Last Uchiha to actually think about why they call him that.

Or maybe it’s because it’s awful to think about.

Sakura still can’t get over the fact that he just lives there. Alone.

That’s so… sad. Really sad.

They reach Sasuke’s house before she can decide what to do about it all. It looks nice, and old, and just as well kept as every other building around. There’s an Uchiha fan painted on the door.

“We’re here,” Sasuke says, and opens the door. He gestures for them to follow, and takes off his shoes at the entrance, taking a pair of slippers as he absently calls, “I’m home!”

Sakura almost expects someone to reply, but of course, no one does.

Naruto doesn’t mark the same awkward pause she does. He walks around her and removes his own shoes, taking a pair of guest slippers from the rack and putting them on before following Sasuke, neck craning as he looks around.

“Sorry for the intrusion,” Sakura mutters, mostly to herself, before closing the door and doing the same. It’s just polite.

She feels a small gust of air just above her head and shivers. She checks the door, but it’s closed properly. Hesitantly, she leaves it be and follows the sounds - Naruto’s grumbling again - to wherever her teammates have gone. Would it be impolite to mention to Sasuke that there’s a draft in his entrance? Sakura’s not sure.

Just in case, she won’t say anything.

She wants to be invited over again, after all. Oh, Ino’s going to be so jealous.

She walks into what must be the living room, to find Sasuke glaring at Naruto, who is bouncing in place, arms waving wildly.

“Ramen!” Naruto exclaims.

“No,” Sasuke says.

“Come ooon,” Naruto whines.

“No,” Sasuke says, again, sharper.

He looks over, notices her, and scowls. Sakura feels her heart squeeze - oh no, is he regretting inviting her? Naruto’s probably annoyed him so much already that he’s going to just throw them out.

She braces herself for rejection, but instead Sasuke crosses his arms.

“Is curry okay?” He asks her.

“Oh!” Sakura startles, then smiles hesitantly at him. “Yes! I love curry.”

“Good,” Sasuke says. He gestures to the table, “Make yourselves at home.”

“Ah, do you need help?” Sakura offers, trailing after him.

Sasuke stares at her blankly. Sakura is pushing her luck, really, but she stands her ground, smiling at him hopefully. After a couple of blinks, her teammate slowly inclines his head.

“Sure,” he says. “I could use a hand.”

He turns around before she can reply, so Sakura feels safe in doing a quick, discreet fist pump before following him. She’s going to help him cook! Just him and her, in the kitchen, doing domestic things-

“Hey!” Naruto cries out, scrambling after her, “I can help too!”

Sakura groans.

Just him and her and Naruto.

“Do you even know how to cook?” Sakura asks him.

“Of course I do!” Naruto says, loudly, and proudly puffs up, patting his own chest, “I’m the best cook ever, believe it!”

“Actually,” Sasuke interrupts, “I have something for you, first.”

Oh right, Sakura remembers him mentioning that. Something about a gift of some kind. She’d thought it was a story to get Naruto to agree to the invitation. Naruto apparently thought it was a lie too, because he stills, narrowing his eyes at Sasuke. 

“You do?” Naruto asks.

Sasuke nods wordlessly and changes paths, to go to a shelf standing in the corner. There’s a lot of things there, books and scrolls and some boxes. It’s one of those boxes, a black lacquered one with pretty ornate lotus flowers painted delicately over the sides, that Sasuke takes, bringing it to the table.

He opens it with a strange sort of reverence, which Sakura doesn’t understand until it reveals pictures.

She barely manages to get a glance at the first one, which seems to be of a group of dark haired people, before Sasuke takes a small stack that’s been tucked to the side of the box, closing the lid afterwards.

“Here,” he says, thrusting the pictures at Naruto. “I found those the other day. I thought you might want them.”

Naruto takes them, a confused expression on his scrunched face, and looks down at the very first one.

Sakura leans over his shoulder to do the same. The photograph is obviously old, the colors slightly faded. On it there’s two young kunoichi, one of them with bright red hair and a large grin, and the second one with dark hair and eyes, smiling more reservedly but still obviously delighted. The redhead is pointing at her hitai-ate. There’s something oddly familiar about the two of them, even though Sakura’s never seen either of them before.

“It’s a genin graduation picture?” She wonders.

Sasuke gives a tiny nod.

“Who’s that?” Naruto asks, still squinting at the two kunoichi like it’s a trap.

“My mother, Uchiha Mikoto, and her best friend, Uzumaki Kushina,” Sasuke says.

Naruto’s eyes grow wide, his entire body freezing. Sakura whips around to stare at Sasuke, shocked. He’s not looking at her, though, but instead at Naruto.

When Sakura turns back, there’s something unbearably fragile in Naruto’s expression.

“Uzumaki Kushina?” He repeats, far quieter than Sakura’s ever heard him.

She must be family, Sakura realizes. In fact, if that other girl is Sasuke’s mother then…

“That’s your mom?” She asks Naruto curiously.

Now that she’s looking at her, it seems obvious. Sure, the colouring isn’t the same, but Naruto’s got the same round jaw, the same grin. The way Uzumaki Kushina’s eyes crinkle with mischievous joy is the same as Naruto’s when he succeeds at a prank.

Naruto bites his lip, then looks up at Sasuke.

“Is she?” He asks, voice wavering.

Sasuke looks away, up at the ceiling and then at the wall. Then he nods.

Naruto’s eyes start to well up with tears, and he looks back down, staring at that faded picture like it’s the most important thing he’s ever seen.

It’s weird.

Doesn’t he have pictures of his parents?

“There’s four others that I found,” Sasuke tells Naruto, who slowly, oh so carefully puts the picture aside to look at the next one. “There’s one where she’s pregnant with you.”

Sakura’s never seen Naruto be so gentle with anything before. He slowly goes through the pictures. There is one, the very last one, where Uzumaki Kushina stands, belly round, glowing with happiness, right next to what must be Sasuke’s mother again. Uchiha Mikoto is holding a baby, a small bundle, and Sakura stares, realizing that that must be Sasuke.

A scuff sound attracts her attention away. Sasuke is by the shelf again, putting the box back in its place.

When he catches her looking, he gestures silently towards the door.

Sakura looks back at Naruto, who’s still staring at his mother. For a moment, even though the opportunity to be alone with Sasuke is right there, she hesitates. It doesn’t seem right to leave Naruto alone here.

But just the same, Sakura doesn’t know what else to say. What else to do.

She raises her hand, awkwardly, intending on, well, she’s not sure. Maybe pat his arm, maybe squeeze it. It feels so wholly inadequate, though, that she doesn’t. She lets her hand fall back to her side, and slowly, quietly leaves, following Sasuke out of the door.

They’re two steps into the corridor when there’s a loud sob behind them, and Sakura bites her lip, turning back-

“Don’t,” Sasuke says quietly.

Sakura looks at him. There’s nothing sympathetic in his face. Nothing that Sakura can read. As always, he just looks coolly distant from everything.

But surely, she thinks, he would know best.

He lost his mother too.

Speaking of, as she hesitantly follows him through the corridor, towards what she assumes is the kitchen, she spies a frame on the wall. It’s a wedding picture, of a couple in traditional kimonos. The man - Sasuke’s father, she assumes - looks severe, almost dour, even for the occasion.

Uchiha Mikoto, though, is smiling softly, a faint blush on her face. She’s lovely, in her wedding kimono, her hair made up with gorgeous ornaments.

“She’s really pretty,” Sakura whispers softly.

She doesn’t expect Sasuke to reply, expects him to ignore her the way he always does when he can get away with it. She spoke quietly enough that he could not have heard. But for once, he actually looks at her, and then at the picture. His whole expression softens, into something that she’s never seen on him.

“Yeah,” he agrees, and looks away again, towards the corridor. His ears are growing a bit red as he adds, “She is.”

It’s very hard not to react, when Naruto keeps flailing like that.

The blond had recovered from his emotions stunningly fast, all things considered. By the time Sasuke and Haruno were done with dinner - and hadn’t that been a trip, having actual, living help in the kitchen - Naruto had pulled himself together. His eyes had still been a bit puffy when they’d come back to the living room, but that was to be expected.

He’d been grieving a mother he’d never known. He was entitled to some crying.

He’d only asked Sasuke if he truly could keep the pictures, uncharacteristically hesitant.

“They’ve got your mom on them too,” he’d said, and that had been so surprisingly thoughtful Sasuke had been left silent for a moment.

“I’ve made copies,” he’d eventually replied. “It’s fine.”

Naruto had nodded, and he hadn’t said thank you in so many words, but his expression as he’d cradled the pictures of Kushina to his chest had been so unbearably grateful that he didn’t need to.

Kushina herself, who’d stayed hovering right above Naruto the entire time, had been just as oddly quiet and grateful.

Thankfully, with dinner ready, things had left the emotional territory and gone back to safer grounds. Such as the awkward realization that none of them truly knew what to talk about.

But the awkwardness had slowly thawed as they started eating, and now Naruto’s back to his normal, exuberant self, gesturing wildly as he recounts for them a prank he intends on playing on their useless sensei. Haruno is berating him, and Sasuke is valiantly trying to keep a smile off his face.

It’s very difficult, in the face of Naruto’s flailing.

His arm keeps smacking right through Fugaku’s face.

Sasuke can’t laugh. He can’t . But the expression on his father’s face is so long-suffering, it makes it very hard to resist.

Shisui and Kushina have no such restraint. Both of them are rolling around in the air, their cackles loud and bright. Each time Naruto makes a grand wave and his hand goes right through Sasuke’s father's flat expression, it grows louder.

“Dear,” Mikoto says, and she may not be laughing but her lips are twitching too, “Maybe you should move?”

“This is my spot at the table,” Fugaku says.

Naruto’s fingers slice through the upper part of his face. Kushina, laughing harder than ever, seems to forget about gravity and falls through the floor. Shisui, wheezing with mirth, is flickering like a faulty holiday garland. He stutters to Sasuke’s side, trying to pull in air that he doesn’t need.

“Holy shit,” he wheezes like a drowning man, a gurgle of air that sounds near painful. “This is- ha!”

Haruno, apparently done pretending to be too tame to match Naruto’s insanity, stands up with an annoyed growl and tries to bat his hand off the air.

This, of course, puts her fist through Fugaku’s throat.

Fugaku has never looked so sour.

Sasuke starts choking on an imaginary bit of carrot, and Shisui, next to him, loses it, pounding his hand through the table. It actually makes the wood shudder once, but of course none of his teammates notice, too busy arguing. They’re jostling the table enough themselves anyway.

“Dear,” Mikoto tries again, her voice shaking with restrained laughter. “Please.”

“This is my spot at the table,” Fugaku repeats, stubbornly. Then, before his wife can tell him he’s being ridiculous, he adds, “This is the first time Sasuke’s brought friends for dinner. It’s my duty to preside over the meal.”

Oh.

Sasuke stops choking on food he doesn’t actually have, and swallows, feeling stupidly touched.

Mikoto sighs, but she looks fond.

“Alright, dear,” she says.

Naruto, of course, choses this moment to actually wave his chopsticks around, stabbing right where Fugaku’s eye would be.

The sigh his father lets out is loud enough to be heard above Shisui’s renewed howling laughter.

It is, surprisingly, the most fun Sasuke’s had at dinner for a while.

The curry doesn’t taste bad either.

Things don’t miraculously become better overnight, of course. But they slowly, steadily improve after that, like Sasuke’s awkward overture was the hammer blow to the fragile vase holding them back. 

They start spending their time waiting for Hatake actually training together, for one. And, a few times, helping Naruto try and set up a prank for the jounin.

It’s good trap-making training, and it promotes teamwork, and that’s what Sasuke intends to tell anyone who asks.

“Nothing unites people more than a common enemy,” Tobirama-sensei muses, amused, from where he’s overseeing their preparations. Pauses, then, “Ah, Sasuke, I believe-”

“No, no, no, Sasuke, you’re using the wrong anchor line!” Kushina interrupts him, loudly. “It needs to be symmetrical, not circular!”

“That,” Tobirama-sensei agrees drolly.

Sasuke grunts in affirmation, erasing the offending anchor line that he’d been tracing around his seal attempt. He quickly chooses a symmetrical one, yin-based for this purpose, then glances up at the two ghosts. Kushina gives him a thumbs up, and immediately floats away to go back to Naruto. Sasuke watches her go for a beat, still a little thrown by her behavior.

Ever since the dinner at Sasuke’s house, where he gave Naruto the pictures of her, she’s been friendlier. Mellower, even. As if her son knowing her name, her face, knowing she existed and that she loved him - that she wanted him, glowing during her pregnancy with the happiness of expectancy - is enough to smooth down the sharp, angry edges of her grief.

Rin told him in confidence, seeming pleased by the woman’s about-face, that Kushina’s pictures now have a place of honor in Naruto’s flat, and that the boy keeps rambling to them as though Kushina could hear him.

She can, of course, but Naruto doesn’t know that.

Sasuke thinks it’s more heartbreaking that way. He thinks that if he were in Kushina’s shoes he’d get more frustrated with someone speaking to him when he can’t reply. But if she’s happy with it, happy enough to actually stop pestering Sasuke for more, then he’s not about to question it.

Tobirama clears his throat needlessly, reminding Sasuke that he’s still working on his part of the trap. He’s smiling.

“A good first attempt for this sort of seal,” he praises. “Your lines are getting steadier, and your understanding more intuitive.”

“It’s basic,” Sasuke mutters, flushing at the praise.

It is, too, a basic trap seal that will hold Hatake down in place for a moment, just long enough for any of them to hopefully get him. It’s easy to avoid, though, and easy to disrupt.

“Basic is better, for a novice,” Tobirama-sensei says easily. “Fuuinjutsu is a capricious art. Overreaching your own abilities could lead to disaster.”

Sasuke nods seriously, taking the advice to heart. It’s a little frustrating, but all the dead sealing experts he’s ever talked to agree on that. Sealing takes a lot of work, a lot of dedication, and a lot of repetition before progress can be made.

He’s about to open his mouth to ask, hopefully, about the next step of his education in that domain, when a subtle touch of chakra nearby alerts him.

Haruno lands on the ground next to him.

“I’m done with my part,” she reports. Inspects the lines of script he traced in the dirt, “That looks impressive, Sasuke-kun!”

“Ah, thank you Ha-” He starts, and quickly corrects himself when she turns wide, wounded eyes at him, “Sakura.”

She turns away immediately.

“I told you you could call me Sakura- chan,” she tells him in a high voice.

Sasuke scrunches up his nose, and doesn’t reply. Ha- Sakura has become bolder, since that evening at his house, insisting that he use her name since they’re teammates. She’d looked horrified enough when he’d called her Haruno the first time during the meal that Sasuke had agreed. Besides, since she’s making an effort to overcome her feelings about his creepiness or whatever else is bothering her about Sasuke in general, Sasuke can make efforts as well.

He draws the line at calling her Sakura-chan, though.

She’s obviously not actually comfortable with that - even just hearing him call her Sakura had made her all odd the first few times before she’d adjusted.

Sasuke’s also not comfortable with it.

He rises to his feet with a sigh.

“Come on,” he says. “Let’s get back to the meeting spot.”

“Okay!” Sakura chirps, and they both jump for the trees.

Tobirama-sensei, keeping pace with them easily, hums.

“She’s truly a natural,” he comments.

Sasuke nods, barely there, a wordless agreement.

Since they started training together during the long hours of waiting in the morning, both Sakura and Naruto have improved in leaps and bounds. Having the Nidaime overseeing them, though Sasuke’s teammates don’t know about him, has helped more than he would have thought possible.

Then again, even ghostly instruction repeated through Sasuke is better than the grand old nothing that Hatake is giving them.

It’s the reason Tobirama even started coming to Sasuke’s team-training sessions in the first place. He hadn’t wanted to believe that their jounin-sensei could be as useless as Sasuke described. And then he’d gotten so aggravated he’d taken over, forcing Sasuke to act as an in-between.

It’d been difficult at the start, Naruto especially chafing at being given instructions by his teammate, and Sakura unsure if they were qualified to learn on their own. Sasuke certainly was not comfortable teaching, even if by proxy.

But after fits and starts, they’d eventually found a common ground. Or rather, a common enemy.

And so, to show Hatake that they wouldn’t be restrained and confined by his teachings - or the lack of such - they’d persevered.

Naruto, after struggling to comprehend the most basic theory, and having no patience for the first steps of learning sealing, much to Kushina’s disappointment, has eventually proven a surprising knack for ninjutsu. Having a bijuu’s chakra in your gut is good for something, apparently, and that’s the absolutely absurd power Naruto can put behind most jutsu.

Of course, his chakra control is very poor, making actually casting the jutsu difficult, and his taijutsu could use refining. As of right now he is more a brawler than anything else. Though he’d also cemented his place as the team’s trap specialist, far more inventive and sneaky when reframing traps as pranks.

It’s a work in progress.

Sakura is the opposite. She doesn’t think outside of the Academy taijutsu style, nor does she seem to have the drive to learn another style, and she lacks the raw chakra needed to use more than one ninjutsu before getting tired. She excels at hoarding and understanding knowledge, though, and her chakra control is the best of all of them.

Tobirama-sensei had started them all on water-walking at the same time, and while Sasuke took several cold dunks in the pond, and Naruto kept literally exploding all the water out of it, Sakura had immediately started running circles around them.

Even running water proved to be almost no challenge to her.

The Nidaime had found that extremely impressive, especially coming from a clanless kunoichi whose parents were first-generation, career chuunin.

Sasuke isn’t jealous about that. He isn’t.

Besides, she’s useless with fuuinjutsu. Kushina called her too rigid when she kept failing at understanding the basis of the theory. The fact that even Naruto seemed to at least get it - even if he got bored of it fast - frustrated her so much she hasn’t tried to learn it again.

Sasuke is thus the only person in their team learning sealing.

Sasuke is trying, very hard, not to feel smug about this.

“Oh, Naruto’s already there,” Sakura says, dragging him out of his thoughts.

Sasuke looks at where she’s indicating and-

“Wait, Sakura,” he says, pulling her back right before she would have jumped to join their teammate. He narrows his eyes, “That’s not Naruto.”

Sakura’s eyes widen, and then narrow as well, inspecting their teammate like a bug, trying to figure out what Sasuke noticed.

Of course, Sasuke can’t exactly tell her.

Rin, from her stop next to the fake Naruto, catches his eye and waves. She floats closer, nodding in greeting to Tobirama-sensei and then humming with slight amusement.

“Hello Sasuke. I’ve spoiled the surprise, haven’t I,” she says. “Would it count as cheating?”

“Any advantage a shinobi has should be utilised,” Tobirama disagrees mildly. “There’s no such thing as fair or cheating in a fight.”

“True enough,” Rin agrees easily.

“Has he caught Naruto?” Sasuke asks, scowling.

“You think this is Kakashi-sensei?” Sakura asks in turn, growing suspicious as well - she probably noticed by now how weirdly well behaved and patient this Naruto is.

“He hasn’t,” Rin answers Sasuke’s question.

“Hn,” Sasuke says eloquently.

“We could- uh, I mean, what should we do, Sasuke-kun?” Sakura asks.

Sasuke resists the urge to sigh at her.

Sometimes he thinks she’s made progress, that she’s better at ignoring their previous issues, and sometimes she falls back right into that same old, odd behavior of trying to… appease him? He’s not quite sure.

Regardless;

“If you have an idea,” he starts leadingly, then trails off.

“Oh well,” Sakura fidgets, twirling a strand of hair with a finger. “We could pretend we don’t know it’s not Naruto, and lead him to the trap like that? We can send a clone to warn Naruto.”

Huh. That’s simple and effective.

Sasuke nods.

“Let’s do this,” he agrees.

Sasuke doesn’t actually expect their plan to work, not fully at least. But Hatake keeps underestimating them.

“Where are we going?” He asks, as they run through the undergrowth - they haven’t told him they can tree climb just yet, and there’s no need for that when Sasuke’s seal is on the ground anyway.

“Tch,” Sasuke snorts. “You forgot the plan?”

“We repeated it five times, Naruto!” Sakura adds, sounding exasperated. She waves a fist towards him, forcing Hatake to dodge or risk his henge fading. “I’m not repeating it again!”

“Hn,” Sasuke agrees when their fake teammate turns to him.

Before Hatake can actually try to ask more questions, they reach the clearing. Sasuke and Sakura easily avoid the hidden seal, but fake-Naruto steps right on it. Immediately, Sasuke jumps for cover.

“Now!” Sakura shouts.

“You fell for it, idiot-sensei!” Naruto crows from where he’s hiding above them. “We caught you, believe it!”

Sakura tugs hard on the ninja wire she set up, preventing Hatake from moving even if he breaks the seal prematurely. Incidentally, it dispels the transformation jutsu.

Naruto’s own part of the trap, several balloons full of paint rigged to fall when Hatake struggles, falls on him with a loud splash .

Kushina’s laughter, loud and delighted, starts echoing her son’s, and even Rin starts giggling. Sakura lets out a loud cheer, and Sasuke allows himself a smug smirk.

Hatake cuts the wire and steps out of the seal, dissolving it easily.

“Hm,” he says, mildly. “I see I’ve been giving you too much free time. For your creativity, my cute little students, I think…” His single visible eye curves with what has to be malicious glee. “It’s time to go fetch Tora again. It escaped this morning once more.”

For a beat, nothing moves.

Then, for once in perfect agreement, all three genins of team seven let out a loud denial.