Demon of Redemption

Chapter 3: Interwoven Paths

Generation after generation of Uchihas had been born with the typical Uchiha Temperament: Distant, proper, silent, and humorless. However, every once in a while, a black sheep would be born into the family: a trouble-maker, rude, loud, and with an overly large funny bone.

Sasuke should have been angry that his only son and heir to the clan had been born a black sheep, but he could not find it within himself to be more than temporarily annoyed by the boy. Susumu was just too much like Sasuke’s dead best friend for Sasuke to get angry at him.

It had been a little after Sasuke had struck down Orochimaru that the Uchiha had decided to set his route to take him past Konoha. He did not plan on staying. He wished merely to observe how his once-friends were faring and coming into their own. A little part of him just really wanted to see Naruto, to maybe try to apologize for sticking a hand through his chest at their last meeting, but the Uchiha knew that he would not be able to leave Konoha again if he spoke to the kitsune boy. He knew Naruto would convince him to stay. Maybe Sasuke would never have left Konoha in the first place had it been Naruto who intercepted him instead of Sakura. But the past was the past. Sasuke was stronger than ever. It was almost time to take on his brother, to kill him. Still, he took enough time to visit Konoha as a silent observer. When he got there, however, he found something he never expected – absolutely nothing.

Everything had been destroyed - A hole in the middle of a land once so friendly to all. Now, it was the site of a massacre. Was everyone of his generation dead? Was all of Konoha dead? The more he searched, and the more people he spoke to in neighboring towns, the more he had to admit that everyone he had once known, once shared a form of camaraderie with, was dead, gone from the earth with not so much as a grave marker to remember them by. Sasuke came close to crying that night. The pain was immense, so immense, he felt his bloodline evolving. Mangekyo was now his. But still, was the cost of all the people he knew worth it whether he had taken their lives or not? Did pain of the heart unlock the bloodline? If so, it was truly a cursed bloodline.

Nevertheless, Sasuke continued on his journey to fulfill his ambition to kill his brother. When he used the Mangekyo against his brother, it felt not like he was fighting his brother alone, but rather the entire lost population of Konoha had lent their strength to him. He struck down his brother. That was the first part of his ambition. The next part of his ambition seemed to be his only goal in life now, almost. He also had a growing curiosity. Through both the deaths of Orochimaru and Itachi, there was the same person shadowing his victories – this Demon of Redemption. The Legend claimed to have saved Itachi for a friend, but if that was true, wouldn’t Shoukinto save Itachi again from death at his brother’s hands? The only answer Sasuke could come up with was that Shoukinto had saved Itachi so that Weasel could be killed by Sasuke. If that was true, then that meant that the Living Legend counted Sasuke among his friends, an interesting thought.

Sasuke did eventually get his heir to his clan, Susumu, but he remained curious as to who this Demon actually was. So that became his next ambition in life. It proved a tricky ambition. Shoukinto was like smoke, and Sasuke was like the hand trying to catch it.

Now, Sasuke was here in Grass Country in the middle of a cold winter searching for this smoke-of-a-person. Years of searching had led to Sasuke learning the habits of said Legend. Every winter, he seemed to always return to Grass to provide aide to the poor- the ones that would normally starve or freeze to death during the harsh months. He was sure he would find the Demon of Redemption on this chase.

But more importantly, as Sasuke returned to his hotel room, where was his son?

O0o.o0O

Naruto faltered in his steps. Did the boy just say what he thought he did?

“Sa..Sasuke?” he whispered. It had been a long time since that name had left the kitsune-container’s lips, yet it still felt comfortable to say, easy on the tongue.

The name alone awakened memories Naruto had stored away, locked away in sections of his mind that he labeled “Happy Days” and shut the lid to. What was the box doing open? Naruto didn’t count himself worthy enough to allow himself hope that he would see Sasuke again- that would make Naruto happy, and Naruto was not living to be happy anymore. It was other people’s happiness he strove for. The guilt of allowing Kyuubi to kill all of Konoha still hung over Naruto like a dark cloud. It climbed up him like vines that slowly tightened, making it difficult to move, to breath, to go on with life, and they kept tightening up, slowly draining all the life out of him. Didn’t vines die? Was there a way to escape from the guilt?

“Yep. He’s my father! Do you know him?” Susumu chattered, making Naruto come back to the present.

He began to walk again, strengthening the grip he had on the boy. Of course the boy was Sasuke’s son- the hair, the eyes, the line of his nose. It all fit.

“I did,” answered Naruto.

Susumu blinked at the man. Did? His father was most definitely still alive. “Don’t you mean you do know him? It’s not like he’s dead or anything.”

Dead. So many were and it was Naruto’s fault. Sasuke may not be dead- the sole survivor of Uchiha Clan Massacre, and now, one of the few that survived the destruction of Konoha. Naruto had made a promise to Sakura that he would bring Sasuke back to Konoha, but where would he bring him now? There was no Konoha. It was just another promise he had broken.

“I haven’t seen him for many years,” answered Naruto solemnly.

Susumu could feel the heaviness of sorrow and memory in the air. He felt like an intruder in someone else’s memories. He fell silent, and remained silent all the way to the border of the hidden village of Grass.

O0o.o0O

Sasuke rarely got panicked. He had enough trust in his abilities that he believed nothing was too hard for him. However, after overhearing some Grass nins talking about some smart-mouthed brat that another nin, Taichi, had vowed to kill, Sasuke could help but feel a little panicked.

He was rushing through the village when he heard a familiar voice shouting.

“DAD! Daaa-aaad!”

Sasuke turned around to see Susumu running toward him, then jumping, then nearly tackling him in a hug. Sasuke allowed the boy to do so, because he wished that his father had let him do it at a young age.

“Susumu. Why weren’t you in the room?” Sasuke questioned, fixing the boy with a hard, onyx stare.

Susumu gave him a charming smile, which told Sasuke that the boy hoped it would make him forgive the boy without punishment. “Well, dad. See, I’m a young boy and all, and I was bored. So! Being the solver of problems I am, I decided I would just go for a tour of the village. But then there were these jerk shinobi who thought they knew everything, so I politely informed them of their errors.” Sasuke took this to mean that Susumu had cussed them out. “But they were asses and didn’t take to kindly to the information, so they started chasing me. I led them on a merry chase until they all gave up except one. He was the Ass-King of Asses, dad. He said he was going to kill me. And then, right before he makes his final strike, Shoukinto is there, and WHAM! The other guy is running off!”

“Shoukinto?” Sasuke asked desperately. Forget that his son had disobeyed his orders, that his son was almost killed, here was information on the man he had been searching years for! And the man had saved his son? It seemed as though the Demon liked to help Sasuke.

“Yeah Dad! He’s right there!” Susumu shouted in Sasuke’s ear, pointing towards the outskirts of town.

Sasuke’s eyes widened and his neck snapped up to search for this Demon of Redemption. “Where?”

“Ther..e…er…Wait,” Susumu looked around confusedly, “Where did he go? He was just standing there,” he pondered quietly. He wanted to show the man to his father. They used to be friends, apparently. Couldn’t they be friends again? They both seemed so lonely.

“It’s okay, Susumu. Shoukinto is always like that. He’s the one that we’ve been trying to find on all these trips,” Sasuke said, guiding his son back to their hotel. He didn’t bother to search for the Legend because Sasuke knew that he would have disappeared without a trace…like always.

“Really? Did you two used to be friends?” Susumu asked excitably.

“No. Why would you ask that?” Sasuke questioned.

“Well, Shoukinto said that he knew you, but that he hadn’t seen you in many years.”

“Is that so?” Susumu nodded. “What else did he say?”

“He didn’t really say that much, mostly just avoided questions. But then I asked him what was under his mask, and asked him to show me.”

“And did he?”

Susumu nodded again. “He took off his ceramic mask and underneath that was…”

Sasuke leaned in, anxious to hear more, “What?”

“Another mask. But this one came to here,” he traced under his eyes, “and so you really couldn’t see his face, but he had the bluest eyes I’d ever seen, kinda cat shaped.”

“I remember one of my old friends had blue eyes, the one I always tell you stories about before bed,” Sasuke told his son, fondly remembering memories of his lost comrades.

“The dobe?” asked Susumu.

“Yes.”

“Could he be Shoukinto?” inquired the boy.

“I doubt it, son, he has been dead for ten years.” A look of pain floated across those black orbs. Sasuke had mellowed out after he had fulfilled all of his childhood ambitions. Don’t take this to mean that he was completely different- he was still one to enjoy a good brood or ten, and he was still relatively quick to anger, and he would kill anyone who got in his way or decided to get smart with him (except his son, but Sasuke figured there wasn’t much use to spawning if you were just going to kill your spawn). But overall, his life seemed simpler. It wasn’t all about getting stronger.

“Oh…” Susumu sighed. He would have really liked to meet ‘The Dobe.’ He was an infamous character in the stories he weaseled out of his father before bed, always seeming to be two steps behind everyone but determined to finish first. Susumu didn’t even know the dobe’s name. His father just always referred to him as ‘Dobe.’ Susumu was a smart boy. Every time his father shared a rare childhood story, he could almost feel the friendship between the two boys. Susumu sometimes wondered if there was more than friendship between the two, but he never dared to ask.

Sasuke ran his fingers through his son’s hair that was so much like his own. The gesture sparked an idea for another question. “What color hair did he have?”

“I don’t know for sure. He had a bandana over it. But I can tell you his eyebrows were blond, and not that white blond either, or that really light brown color that people call blond. His blond was yellow, yellow like…like,” he repeated, racking his brain for an appropriate comparison, “…like the sun.”

“Yellow like the sun?”

“Yeah.”

Yellow hair, blue cat-like eyes, ‘Under my mask is…another mask.’ Sasuke remembered his old Sensei saying that. How would this Demon know that if he hadn’t been around then? The more Sasuke thought about it, the more he couldn’t deny the possibility. The Dobe had been Konoha’s number one most-surprising, knuckle-headed ninja. If anyone had the ability to escape the destruction of Konoha, it would have been Naruto.

‘Could it really be you?’

‘…Naruto…’

TBC