Chapter 45: Sasuke
"Rasengan?"
Hiruzen Sarutobi looked up from his paperwork at his youngest disciple, faintly surprised.
"Yes."
"I want to give Rasengan to Naruto."
Sakura nodded.
"And the reason?"
He didn't reject the request — but he didn't approve it either.
"I'm not Naruto's babysitter. I can't be glued to his side forever."
"He needs his own way to protect himself."
Hiruzen's eyebrow ticked up at that, and he sighed inwardly.
His little plan to nudge Sakura and Naruto together... was officially dead in the water.
"Rasengan, fine. But why are we having Kakashi teach Sasuke Lightning Cutter?"
Sakura's mouth twitched.
This old man had absolutely been spying on her again — and had then made a great show of "processing paperwork" right before she walked in!
"Old man, do you genuinely not get Sasuke's situation?"
Sakura sighed.
"If Sasuke were just an average genin, the village's standard playbook would work fine on him."
"But Sasuke is the last Uchiha."
"Old man — you don't want the village's last Uchiha to get poached out from under us, do you?"
She dropped onto the sofa to one side and poured herself a cup of water.
Hiruzen pondered for a moment. As Hokage, his perspective necessarily ran wider than Kakashi's. He didn't push back on Sakura's framing. Instead, he frowned slightly.
"You're saying we should pour everything into developing Sasuke?"
Sakura held up a single finger and wagged it, serious.
"Not 'everything.' We need Sasuke to be able to see the hope of revenge."
"If we just keep handing him generic missions — and he can't see the path forward..."
"Put yourself in his shoes. If you were Sasuke, what would you do?"
Hiruzen went silent. Then he slowly stood and, under Sakura's puzzled gaze, walked out of the office entirely.
He returned not long after — with a scroll in his hand.
"Read it."
"The truth about the Uchiha."
He set the scroll down on Sakura's palm and exhaled, heavy.
He hadn't wanted Sakura to come into contact with this. But the child was too clever. Without knowing the truth, she could very well make the wrong choice. And he had already chosen her as his successor — which meant she had to know.
Sakura's expression sobered. She slowly unrolled the scroll...
Time ticked by, second by second. Sakura sighed and gently rolled the scroll closed.
Compared to the few scattered glimpses the original story had ever offered, this document laid out everything in plain text.
The friction between the Uchiha clan and Konoha. Every detail of Itachi Uchiha's massacre that night.
From the eighty-year-old elders down to month-old infants.
Not a single one spared.
"So, Sakura. Knowing what you know now — do you still choose to develop Sasuke?"
Hiruzen drew on his pipe, watching his disciple in silence.
Sakura wrinkled her nose at the smoke and then met his eyes, clear.
"Yes."
She'd more or less worked out his thinking. As long as Sasuke Uchiha sat content within Konoha, Itachi Uchiha could sit content out in the cold. Whatever happened to Sasuke as a person beyond that — Hiruzen did not need to micromanage. Alive, healthy, in Konoha. That was enough.
"Give me a reason that convinces me."
Hiruzen frowned through the smoke.
"Walk a mile in his shoes. Put yourself in Sasuke's position. Get treated this lukewarm forever."
"I'd lose my mind."
"Especially given what the Sharingan is by nature."
"And when that happens, either you, old man, clean up the mess yourself —"
"— or I clean it up for you."
He looked at her, voice level.
"You don't worry he'll turn on Konoha?"
Sakura took a sip of the warm tea in front of her.
"Which is exactly why this is what we should be doing. We need to choose his path for him."
"We help him grow. We help him get his revenge. We help him rebuild the Uchiha's glory."
"And in the end, he settles down peacefully in the village that helped him his whole life."
"And the Uchiha — that thousand-year clan — disappear quietly into the river of history, name and legend intact."
The pale blue smoke drifted across the office. Hiruzen hesitated.
"And Itachi Uchiha..."
He didn't finish. Because the girl in front of him spoke first, soft — and the green of her eyes, in that moment, sent something cold sliding down Hiruzen's spine.
"Old man. You don't really think this isn't what Itachi Uchiha himself chose, do you?"
"Having committed a crime that monstrous — dying by Sasuke's hand is the only release left to him..."
By the time Sakura got back to the riverbank with a large sack of water balloons, Naruto and Sasuke were already practicing water-walking.
With the tree-climbing as a foundation, the two of them were managing to stand upright on the surface — clumsily, with a lot of stumbles, but standing.
"Sakura-chan!"
"Look! Look!"
"Aren't I AMAZING?!"
Naruto waved both arms around at her — and immediately, with a very satisfying ker-splash, plunged straight into the water.
"Idiot."
Sasuke watched the drowned-rat version of Naruto resurface, and the corner of his mouth twitched up into the faintest smile.
Sakura looked at Sasuke calmly.
There was a sentence she hadn't finished saying to the Third.
After Itachi Uchiha was dead, she would personally drag Danzō Shimura down in front of Sasuke. After that, what Sasuke chose to do was up to him.
Only by giving Sasuke the truth could the situation actually be resolved.
A nudge here, a nudge there, and Sasuke would understand.
After all — the whole thing was the Weasel's fault and the Bandage-Wrapped Geezer's fault.
"Hey, Sakura..."
Sasuke, balancing on the water, looked over at her. His expression was a touch awkward, with the faintest flush of red at the edges.
"Thanks..."
Kakashi had already told him about the plan to teach him Lightning Cutter. And had made it explicit that Kakashi had only made the call to teach him because of Sakura's pushing.
Sakura's claim wasn't a bluff either — even if Kakashi refused, she could've gotten the Lightning Cutter training method out of the Third herself. It just would've been slower.
"Don't mention it. We're partners, aren't we?"
Sakura smiled lightly back.
Looking at the bright-eyed girl in front of him, Sasuke gave a small nod.
The truth was, his feelings about Sakura were tangled.
Because ever since the day, when he was six, that this girl had bumped him out of first place at the Academy, he'd marked her as his rival. He'd quietly busted his back trying to surpass her...
Then she skipped grades. Then his clan was massacred.
He found her again, wanting to beat her — and got casually steamrolled.
Time crawled forward. Sasuke had been chasing the goal of beating Sakura — his self-appointed first target — ever since.
What he had not expected was to be assigned to the same team as the rival (in his head) he'd been chasing.
Which had only made him swear to himself, even harder, that he'd beat her one day.
But this sudden act of kindness from her today had caught him completely off guard...