"Such a precise calculation as the one you told me about is impossible without knowing — or rather, feeling in advance — where the threads of fate will stretch from each new knot. And for that... ordinary knowledge isn't enough!"
© Henry Lion Oldie
At first, it seemed to Sarada that saying a word to anyone or being seen would make the whole world collapse like a house of cards. But over time, she finally understood what the deity meant. The world didn't want to change. And mere desire to change it wasn't enough. Sarada felt like a speck caught between the gears of a gigantic mechanism. It simply ground her up. The forces directing the world along its former path were too strong, and even Itachi, knowing the future, couldn't change anything.
You could knock the world off course, sure. Sarada suspected that one tiny thing, seemingly unrelated to the clan's criminal intentions, would suffice to stall the smoothly working mechanism in a stupor, screeching and belching clouds of black smoke, then spin in reverse. A puff of wind, a forgotten pouch at home, tomatoes in Yashiro's miso soup for breakfast, a random word, a book moved from one spot to another, a stone falling from the Hokage Monument onto some rat's head. A trifle... But impossible to calculate which one. The Hyuga Byakugan saw chakra flow and key points, tenketsu. To set the world on a new course, you needed a gift like the Byakugan, but far grander: to see knots of fate's weaving, know what any chance would lead to, freely stroll through time while holding an unimaginable volume of information in consciousness. The human mind wasn't capable of that. But Sarada vaguely realized that a god's mind was.
She hadn't been to meetings for two months, since her uncle beat up the patrolmen on the street. Something important was surely happening there, but Sarada didn't know, and the stuffy Naka Shrine basement gradually faded from memory. Did Itachi go to the shrine? Sarada had no idea. He never shared details of his life with anyone. Uncle hardly appeared at home. Sometimes he came to sleep, but late at night when she was already asleep. Grandfather, having stripped himself of Uchiha head powers and leaving the clan to Yashiro, spent more time with family and Sasuke.
Little dad was beaming. Apparently, father was teaching him the Fireball technique, as Sasuke's whole face was burned. Dad rushed around the house like mad, grandma Mikoto caught him and smeared ointment, and Sarada smiled to herself.
Today Sasuke was kept late for some reason, and Sarada, leaving the academy empty-handed, decided to visit Naruto. He'd been nagging her since morning, come on, let's go visit, and uncle suddenly advised dropping by. But Sarada had team training all day, and she only visited Naruto closer to evening.
From the height of the Uzumaki clan porch with its curly design, there was a great view of Konoha. White house walls were tinged orange by the setting sun; shadows fell on the Hokage Rock stone faces. Sarada rubbed her bare arms and shoulders, chilled — evening coolness had descended on the village with dusk.
The door flew open.
"Nee-chan!"
Naruto leaned over the threshold, holding the doorframe, peering at her curiously.
"You have ponytails," he announced.
"Don't stand barefoot on the threshold, come in."
Sarada spun him by the shoulders back to her and pushed him into the apartment. Naruto wriggled and kept trying to turn.
"No, let me see, dattebayo!"
She squatted to unshoe, and Naruto kept jumping around, grabbing her short skinny ponytails. Her hair had grown in the last year. Sarada liked her old hairstyle, but hadn't gotten around to going back, so she had to tie it up so it wouldn't get in the way.
"So soft..."
"Na-ru-to!"
His touches were pleasant but ticklish.
"Why two? Why not one?"
"Because when I have one, everyone compares me to Itachi," Sarada answered sullenly.
In truth, she liked the comparison. But by legend, she and uncle weren't blood relatives, and the outward similarity looked suspicious.
"Sasuke's big brother?"
"Yeah. Haven't you ever seen him?"
"Nope."
Sarada noted with satisfaction that the apartment was clean. Naruto knew who was visiting.
"Why was dad kept late? — she thought. — This never happened before."
Vague anxiety stirred in her heart, but Naruto shattered it with his yell:
"I'm out of soup!"
"A hint?"
"Yeah, dattebayo!"
And that I'm tired from training doesn't interest you, of course.
"Fine," Sarada gave in, then doubted. "But do you have ingredients?"
Naruto smugly flung open the refrigerator.
"Uh. You prepared."
Ten minutes later, water boiled on the stove. Sarada cut vegetables into even cubes.
"This."
Naruto demandingly placed a potato on the table.
"No."
He frowned and hid it back in the fridge.
"This."
Sarada wearily turned.
"No!"
"Why?! I want that thing in my soup, dattebayo!"
"It doesn't go together."
"You're boring," Naruto muttered.
Sarada stopped cutting and froze.
"Really?" she asked threateningly, half-turning.
"N-no," Nanadaime stammered, seeing her glasses glint ominously in the lamp light. "Accidentally."
Sarada, squinting, bored into him for a few seconds.
"I'll pretend I misheard," she shrugged and continued cutting vegetables, displeased that her voice still sounded damn nagging.
Naruto behaved quietly and didn't pester with dubious suggestions anymore. In the silence, Sarada sank into thought unnoticed. She thought about her life, her future, and about...
"Naruto..." No threat in her voice anymore, only worry. "Do you remember my request? About Sakura."
Sarada turned. The boy's gaze was unusually firm.
"Of course," he declared resolutely and... offended? "I'm the future Hokage. Or do you doubt me?"
Sarada suddenly felt very ashamed. Not clarifying would be unforgivable negligence costing lives. But she really doubted. After all, before her was a child with his own worries and thoughts, and terribly scatterbrained. Even if he became Hokage someday, who knew when enough responsibility would awaken in him to unhesitatingly entrust him with her life and her loved ones'.
Sarada turned away.
It's already awakened.
"Sorry," she said quietly. "I wanted to make sure. It's important to me."
Home, familiar entryway... Itachi walked down the corridor without unshoeing and cracked open the door to the room where two chakra sources flickered distantly. Parents sat on the floor, backs to him.
"You chose the village after all," father said without turning.
No hate in his voice. Did parents understand everything?
With each year, Itachi drifted further from father, and only after Kotoamatsukami did parent try restoring former relations. But Itachi didn't accept it. He was sure those weren't father's thoughts, but Shisui's technique aftermath. What use talking to someone reprogrammed by supreme genjutsu?
But now a sudden thought pierced consciousness: what if it wasn't the genjutsu? What if Kotoamatsukami gave only a tiny push, and all thoughts and feelings were father's own, not imposed?
Why didn't I realize this sooner?
"Dad..." Itachi breathed.
And was surprised. The word slipped off his tongue by itself. He'd even forgotten calling this man "dad." It was long ago. Then his soul was still full of light and hopes. He didn't know clan hate, village conflict, loneliness, despondency, disappointment. He just loved his family and dreamed of peace. That naive child didn't suspect where fate would lead him, that in ten years he'd stand with sword at parents' backs.
"Mom..."
"We all understand, Itachi," mom said tenderly.
Itachi had long prepared himself morally and thought he wouldn't regret anything when it ended. Entering the parental home, he expected panic, mother's scared eyes, fight with father, but not this: not calm parents ready to accept death from their own son.
They understood.
"Promise me," father said firmly, "that you'll take care of Sasuke."
Feelings frozen in his heart after killing Izumi began thawing. Heart-wounding warm pain flooded his chest, unstoppable, unstuffable back. It rose higher, gripped his throat, poured from eyes as tears.
"I will..." Itachi forced out, unable to hold back sobs.
Tears streamed down cheeks, chin, dripped onto sword hilt. So many, as if accumulated twelve years while Itachi denied them outlet, didn't allow showing. He cried in others' presence for the first time.
"Don't be afraid," father said. "This is the path you chose yourself."
"Dad... If this wasn't now... A year ago. When you were still leader and wanted revolution. Would you say the same?"
Father was silent. Then, after pause:
"Yes. I wouldn't fight you. You're my son."
Itachi's body shook with silent sobs. If father opposed him, mother would stand to defend her son. Neither wanted this.
"Don't doubt, since you decided. Our pain is nothing compared to yours; it'll end instantly."
Itachi gripped the tear-wet sword hilt.
"I rushed too much," father said. "I should have trusted you more. You could have been the first Uchiha Hokage, breaking through village prejudice. You always went your own way. I wanted to arrange your future, but ruined it. Forgive me if you can."
"Dad..." Itachi forced out in agony.
His voice trembled.
"Too late now. But whatever... I'm proud of you."
Itachi had long dreamed of hearing those words, but not like this, but in daylight, donning the Hokage hat before village eyes.
A dream that would never come true.
Time was running out. Sasuke should return any moment.
Itachi thrust the sword into mother's back, but his own heart stung, as if killing himself. Choking on a gasp, mom collapsed to the floor.
"You were always a very affectionate child," Fugaku said quietly.
Itachi plunged the sword into father's back and leaned on him with full body. Through the metal weapon transmitted vibration from the wounded heart beating its last beats and stopping.
Footsteps in the corridor. Too early. He hadn't recovered, gathered thoughts, wiped tears. Useless anyway; they still streamed down cheeks. Even father still alive. Too early, way too early!
Damn. Sasuke...
"Nee-chan!" Naruto's ringing voice called demandingly from the next room.
Sarada was washing dishes.
"Coming."
Someone knocked on the window. Sarada turned to the sound and nearly dropped the soapy plate. It was already dark outside; tiny glowing house windows showed in the gloom, and the kitchen reflected clearly in the glass like a mirror. But now through Sarada's reflection and familiar room broke the image of a terrifying mask with black holes for eyes. Her heart nearly stopped from horror.
It took Sarada extra moments to pull herself together and realize what was happening.
Monkey mask. Anbu? But why here? What do they want?
Sarada set the plate aside and rushed to the window.
"Nee-chan!"
"Wait!" she snapped, hoping her voice didn't tremble much from agitation and tension.
The window sash creaked up. Cold evening air burst into the kitchen, and a few night moths fluttered in, which had previously battered the glass hopelessly. On the steep roof ledge sat a shinobi in a white Anbu mask with yellow patterns.
"Uchiha Sarada," he said dully. "Return to the Uchiha district immediately."
"What..."
She choked. Suppressed anxiety suddenly flared anew, filling her chest and disrupting breath.
"Immediately," the Anbu added.
And vanished. Sarada didn't even have time to ask.
Damn. Damn-damn-damn.
"Nee-ch..."
"Just wait!" Sarada exclaimed in fury, nearly crying.
Nanadaime came to the kitchen after her. Rudely shoving him aside, she flew into the corridor, hastily slipped on sandals, and burst out of the Uzumaki house without even closing the door.
Sarada ran through evening streets, feverish thoughts whirling in her head: "What? What could have happened?" Sarada had guesses, but they didn't fit with Anbu appearing under Naruto's windows and ordering return to the district. Considering the scale of what might have happened, no one would send Anbu personally for her, Uchiha Sarada who was worthless, meaningless, and couldn't resolve anything. Because despite all her chunin-level skills, she was still too weak.
At the park fork, Sarada braked sharply and thought she should pick up Sasuke from the academy. The teacher asked for more time, and the requested term hadn't expired yet, but...
No. Don't pick him up. If all's well — after.
...burst through the clan district gates and froze. Quiet. Too quiet. Streetlights shone, but nearest houses were dark. Others had lights here and there, but still, Sarada felt: something wrong.
Panic shook her body with tremors.
"You're a shinobi. Can't be so scared; you're not at war, but in your own village. What will you be like on a mission?" conscience reproached.
But reason countered: "I know what I'm afraid of."
That the rebellion started.
But if so, why so quiet on the streets?
Sarada moved down the road slowly. She headed home, but Anbu didn't tell her to go home; he said district. So what to worry about was happening in the district.
Sarada found the first corpse on a house threshold in the open doorway. Diffused light poured from the nearest room into the corridor visible beyond the door. The house was quiet. The sight brought wild horror. She'd seen corpses before, but in other circumstances, and this dead body confirmed all her fears: they were no longer a ghostly threat, but quite real.
"Who did this?" Sarada blurted and covered her mouth with her palm.
Her words sounded too loud in the street silence. The killer was surely nearby. Be alert. If the killed man didn't wield Sharingan, there's hope to fight off. If he did...
Why did they call me? Why not uncle? I can't help, but he can. Or he's already here and all's fine? A-ah!
Thoughts and empty guesses drove her mad. Sarada ran toward grandfather's house. Dead people in blood pools stared sightlessly sideways or at the pavement. Scary. But scarier was the silence in nearest houses. No conversations heard, no one noticing the killed, raising no panic. Were there similar corpses inside?
At that thought, another shiver shook her body.
This had happened before. Streets with clan crests and animal fear driving forward. Only last time earth rumbled and Kyuubi's deafening roar sounded. Now clan district streets flooded with silence like death's icy breath swallowing all sounds, draining some lives, forcing others to hide hoping death passes by.
Last stretch. That same alley where patrolmen once cornered her and dad. Familiar crack on the gloomy fence on one crest.
Brain pulsed: "Just let them be alive. Just let them be alive."
Sarada couldn't think of anything else. She burst through the open entryway door and froze. Door open. Someone was here.
Quiet... But instinct said further, in grandfather's room, there were living ones, several. Even if killer, surely living near him — grandfather or grandma. Or killer dead, relatives alive. Or several killers alive, and grandma and grandfather...
Why go there? If last option true, I'll die. But... I can't just leave without knowing if grandma and grandpa alive. I'll go mad first. And they've surely noticed me...
Without unshoeing, Sarada stepped onto the wooden threshold and quietly moved to grandfather's study. Quiet, but not quiet. Knees trembled, legs disobeyed. She couldn't even repeat the silent step taught in academy. If enemy there, how fight?
Several steps. Open shoji panel, familiar chakra. Hope and relief gripped her soul.
Uncle! He's here!
Sarada boldly stepped into the room and froze. On the floor in a blood pool lay dead grandma. Beside knelt grandfather, and the boy with hair-covered face was just yanking the sword from his back. Slipping off the blade, grandfather's body crashed to the floor. The boy silently sheathed the sword on his back.
Sarada didn't fully grasp what she saw.
Or not grandpa and grandma. Or not uncle.
But fire of life faded in the dead couple's bodies, and the last living being's chakra clearly belonged to Uchiha Itachi.
"Uncle..."
He whipped around to her, as if stung by electricity. In red eyes filled with pain and fury flashed fright.
"You..." Itachi whispered, as if seeing a ghost.
Moonlight from the street fell through the window on his face.
All in tears. He was crying. Impossible.
"What's happening?" Sarada muttered.
Far-far in her brain a guess had long spun, but Sarada drove it away so furiously, as if such an answer had no right to exist and couldn't.
"Itachi exclaimed angrily, but his always even voice broke into a hysterical sob.
Sarada took a step back.
"What the devil..." Tears streamed from Itachi's eyes again. "What... What did you come here for?"
The tomoe in his Sharingan swirled, merging into a strange pattern, as if three magatama beads with holes overlaid on each other had thrust their sharp tails outward, dividing the red iris into equal sectors.
"Ma-ma-mask..." Sarada stammered out.
Her uncle's face blurred, her vision clouded by the tears welling up.
"Undead thrall... said... to the district..."
She couldn't explain properly, but it seemed her uncle understood everything. How terrifying it was to look at his tear-streaked face and changed eyes. The unflappable, eternally cold Itachi, who almost never laughed and certainly never sobbed.
"What's wrong with your eyes... Is that really grandpa?"
Her legs kept backing toward the wall on their own. Her uncle was silent. And suddenly Sarada realized that the hunch she had desperately refused to accept was the only true one.
He killed them. Grandpa. Grandma. All those people on the streets.
Sarada wouldn't have believed it until the very end. If she'd arrived a couple of seconds later, she never would have believed it. But she'd seen with her own eyes how Itachi pulled his sword from her still-living grandpa's body.
Her uncle's gaze suddenly slid behind her back. Sarada whipped around. Before her, from the funnel swirling around the hole of an orange mask, in the dim gloom of the office, a tall figure in a black cloak emerged.
"Aren't you done yet?" a low male voice asked.
Sarada retreated. Now she was backing toward her uncle.
A kunai flashed in the hand that slipped from under the cloak. The Sharingan activated instantly, and Sarada dodged the strike that would have slit her throat if she'd hesitated even a second. A red iris gleamed in the black hole of the mask.
Uchiha?
Sarada instinctively sent genjutsu into the pupil, but it shattered before reaching the man's mind.
"No!" her uncle exclaimed from behind her.
Sarada drew her kunai and struck the stranger where she assumed the liver was. Aiming higher would have been awkward and dangerous. Surprisingly, the man didn't resist or try to block her attack, even though it would have been easy with the Sharingan. The kunai passed easily through the cloak's fabric... and met no resistance. There was nothing under the cloak. And no cloak itself, as if the man had turned out to be an illusion after all.
But he spoke, he was real...
Losing her balance, Sarada fell right onto the stranger and emerged from the other side of the cloak.
What...
She spun around sharply. The Uchiha crashed into her like a hawk on prey. Something cold slammed into her chest, penetrating deep into the yielding flesh, and lodged in her heart. It hurt, but... more frightening than painful. In horror, Sarada stared at the orange mask right in front of her face. A heavy metal blade was frozen in her chest, something warm and wet spreading across her dress. It took Sarada a moment to realize it was her own blood.
With a sharp yank, the man pulled out the kunai, and life began to pour out of her body in spurts along with the blood. Her heart refused to pump blood through her body. The mechanism that had sustained her body's life for thirteen years was broken. She couldn't breathe. Sarada was suffocating, whether from panic or...
Her fading consciousness caught the mad roar of her uncle:
"Nooo!"
Cold sweat broke out on her back. Her palms and heels prickled as if with nails. Cold rose from her fingertips up her arms and legs. Panic... Fear... And a nagging pain in her chest.
I'm scared. Uncle, I'm scared. Help. Somebody.
The cold and weakness had already gripped her entire body.
Consciousness was crushed by darkness.
****
The activated dojutsu allowed Itachi to feel how life was rapidly leaving his beloved niece. A fatal strike. Madara struck to kill.
She couldn't be saved.
And that was too much. Izumi, mom, dad... And now Sarada too. His thawing soul bled out along with the dying girl.
"Why?!" Itachi exclaimed.
A cry from the soul.
Why so much pain for me? Why did it all have to fall on me?
He shouldn't have shouted, shown his weakness. His new path had only just begun, and to fall like this in someone's eyes... It didn't matter, none of it mattered now.
"You said it yourself. We kill everyone except Sasuke," Madara reminded him dryly.
He'd interpreted his partner's exclamation in his own way.
Itachi bored into the hand that had taken Sarada's life. Old images resurfaced in his memory. The man in the orange tiger-striped mask who approached their procession with a springy gait, pretending to be a mad jester, and plunged both Team Two and the Anbu squad, and the daimyo with his two ninja guards, into genjutsu. Only he and Tenma had withstood the genjutsu, and Tenma rushed into the unequal fight. Too hastily... Itachi still remembered the bewilderment and shock in his comrade's eyes when the strike passed through and Madara's hand pierced his body. That sight had haunted Itachi's nights more than once.
Images, images...
Tenma twitching in his death throes. His body sliding off the hand onto the dusty road. Itachi's own stupor: covered in cold sweat, he couldn't force himself to move a finger. The pain of loss, guilt, and the sense of his own weakness had woven together in his soul so tightly that the Uchiha genes took them as a signal to act: Madara killed his friend but also gave him new power—the power of the Sharingan.
Even then, Itachi had sworn to himself that the next time he met Tenma's killer, things would be different. But now history was repeating itself. And, just like then, he hadn't been able to do anything. It all happened instantly, and Itachi, shocked by his emotional pain, the murder of his parents, Sarada's sudden appearance, had frozen in place and couldn't move.
Gods, again. I failed again! And you, Uchiha Madara, you...
This hellish feeling had become too familiar to Itachi. He'd first felt it after the mission where Tenma died, four years ago. The second time today, staring at his trembling hands over Izumi's dead body. And the third time was now. Itachi knew how this storm of emotions burning him from inside ended: it granted new power. One after another. Sharingan... Mangekyo Sharingan... What next?
It seems today I'm fated to reach the peak.
A thirst for murder arose somewhere in his lower abdomen and surged toward his eyes along with chakra blazing with hatred, and at that very moment, black fire erupted on Madara's hand gripping the bloodied kunai. The man flailed, drew a new kunai, and swiftly severed his own hand. A chunk of pale flesh fell to the floor and continued burning.
"Mangekyo..." the low voice said calmly, but with a hint of surprise. "When did you manage that?"
Itachi took a step toward Madara, but the latter deftly retreated, sucking himself into the mask's eyehole. The severed hand seemed not to concern him.
In Itachi's inflamed, pain-racked mind flashed the thought that chopping off one's own hand with a kunai in one motion was no small feat, but now was not the time. Heat emanated from the black fire still greedily devouring Madara's hand flesh. Where had this technique come from? Had the Mangekyo given him not only Tsukuyomi?
Itachi slowly approached Sarada. She was already dead. Her hair, tied in two cute pigtails, lay scattered messily on the floor; a dark wet stain spread across her chest around the hole in her torn dress.
Monkey mask.
His subordinate. Danzou really had made sure all Uchiha were in the district.
He outplayed me. Damn...
It had been foolish to think the Root leader would overlook someone and let an unaccounted Uchiha survive. But bargaining for Sarada's life had been pointless. All Itachi could do was hope Sasuke's daughter's absence would go unnoticed.
It hadn't.
He collapsed to his knees by the body and with a trembling hand closed the dead girl's eyelids.