Chapter 548: Hatred and Love, Undisguised
Satsuki listened in silence as young Sasuke told his story.
The words came out bitter and broken, halting and uneven, each sentence peeling back the scab from a wound that had never properly healed. He described that day -- an ordinary day, indistinguishable from any other. He had left for school the same way he always did, thinking about nothing more than coming home to eat his mother's cooking and practice shuriken throwing with his brother that evening.
Then he returned to the clan district and found that not a single person was left alive.
He walked into the house he had known his whole life. His parents were lying in a pool of blood. And then he understood who had killed them.
Satsuki's eyes had gone cold well before he reached that part of the story. But the part that held her attention -- the part she kept turning over -- came after.
Young Sasuke described the genjutsu. How Itachi had trapped him inside it. How, within that constructed world, he was forced to watch his parents die -- again and again and again, without end, without escape, without any way to wake himself up. The images simply played on repeat, and all he could do was watch.
Tsukuyomi. She knew that technique.
She also knew, intimately, what her own world's massacre night had looked like. She knew that the only reason she had been spared that particular torment was because Naruto had intervened.
She kept listening. She watched young Sasuke's eyes as he described the details -- hollow and exhausted, carrying a grief too large to hold. The coldness in her own gaze deepened with each word. Not distance. Something closer to a pressure building toward release.
"You don't know what to do now. Do you."
She spoke quietly, her voice steadier than it had been before. "You don't know whether to pursue revenge against Itachi. You don't know whether to forgive him."
Young Sasuke raised his head and looked at her. Then, slowly, he nodded.
Satsuki didn't hesitate.
"If it were me, I wouldn't give up on revenge."
"I would kill Itachi. I would make him pay for what he chose to do."
"And before he died, I would tell him -- I only walked the path he laid out for me. A place with no one left to care about has no meaning at all."
Young Sasuke blinked. "...What?"
He hadn't expected that. Not even close.
He had braced himself for platitudes. Something like "only you can decide your own path," or "revenge won't fill the emptiness inside you," or "letting go of hatred is where true strength begins." The kinds of things people said when they didn't know what else to offer.
Satsuki had said none of that.
"But... Itachi, he... in the end, he was trying to protect..."
Young Sasuke struggled to find the words, reaching for something to hold onto.
"And that makes it acceptable for him to raise a blade against everyone else without asking their permission?"
She cut him off without softness.
"He wanted to protect himself, so he killed everyone you cared about. Then he stood in front of you and said 'this was for your own good'?" She held his gaze directly. "Listen carefully."
"If someone right now, in the name of 'protecting you,' killed every person that mattered to you --"
"The companion who always followed you around. The people who were still willing to stand by you in your darkest moments --"
"And then they looked you in the eye and said, 'I had to kill them. It was for your sake.' --"
"Would you forgive them?"
Young Sasuke's lips trembled. No words came.
"Would you call it 'a necessary sacrifice'?"
Satsuki kept going. Each word landed precisely where she meant it to -- in all the places young Sasuke had been too afraid to touch.
"Would you feel grateful that they 'protected' you by leaving you utterly alone in this world?"
"Those people who died -- what crime did they commit? What did they do wrong? They simply cared about you. They were caught up in this because of their connection to you. And you're telling me that can be forgiven?"
There was anger in her voice, but it wasn't blind fury. It was the anger of someone who genuinely could not accept the logic being presented to her.
"Calling murder protection. Dressing up a massacre as sacrifice. Treating everyone's lives as expendable pieces to be discarded whenever it serves the purpose -- and all of it justified because the reason behind it was supposedly 'noble'?"
"Don't be naive."
"Itachi made choices."
"He chose to kill everyone. He chose to let you survive. He chose to carry it alone. Those were his choices."
"But you are not obligated to accept them."
She looked at him steadily -- this boy from another world, this younger version of herself.
"You are allowed to hate him."
"You are allowed to kill him."
"You are allowed to make him understand exactly how foolish, how arrogant, how presumptuous his 'protection' truly was."
"You are also allowed not to hate him."
"You are also allowed to let him live."
"You are also allowed to find a completely different path."
"But whatever you choose -- do not lie to yourself by saying 'he meant well.' Don't hide behind that."
"Because real protection means standing beside you. Not standing across from you."
"Real love means giving you the right to choose. Not making every choice for you."
"Do you understand?"
That was Satsuki's answer.
Straightforward. Unfiltered. From the very core of who she was -- she had never been able to accept this kind of reasoning. The idea that someone could justify killing the people you loved most by claiming it was all for you. What kind of logic was that?
She ran the scenario through her mind, briefly. If that night had gone differently -- if there had existed some version of events where killing Naruto was the only way to keep her alive, and Itachi had actually done it --
She knew what adult Naruto would say about this. If sacrificing himself could guarantee Satsuki's safety with absolute certainty, Itachi would have done it. For that person, a sibling's life ranked above everything, even the village itself.
Satsuki stopped the thought there.
She didn't dare follow it further.
Because the image it produced was too brutal. In the scenario she was constructing, she saw herself hunting down and killing the Itachi who had taken Naruto from her -- and then she saw what came after. The collapse that wouldn't heal. What she imagined herself doing next was frightening enough that she pulled back from it entirely.
Enough.
She forced the images out of her mind. That situation hadn't happened. There was no point in frightening herself with it.
Young Sasuke had his head bowed, staring at the ground, his eyes fixed on something that wasn't there.
Was that the answer, then.
Yes.
What right did he have to forgive Itachi on behalf of the dead? Every single person who had been killed that night -- including infants who hadn't even understood the world yet, lives extinguished before they'd had the chance to see anything -- what right had they had to be "sacrificed"?
This protection.
It was too heavy.
Heavy enough to crush him.
"Rinne Rebirth Jutsu."
A voice broke the silence of the Valley of the End.
Young Naruto startled. He stared at the adult version of himself -- at that single normal eye, which had suddenly changed. The pupil had shifted to something strange and otherworldly: a black sclera shot through with a golden iris, mysterious and unsettling in a way that was difficult to look away from.
Using the power of his Star Eye, adult Naruto had accomplished two things in the span of a single moment. He had located the Pure Land of this world. And he had located this world's God of Death.
Then the connection formed.
An instant later, a massive skull erupted from the earth.
It was enormous -- grotesque and ancient-looking, its gaping mouth lined with rows of jagged fangs. It simply rose from the ground without warning, and both young Naruto and young Sasuke -- the latter still lost somewhere inside his grief -- lurched back in shock.
"Wha -- what IS that?!"
Young Naruto let out a yelp, stumbling backward by instinct.
It was the God of Death. The presence that presided over the Pure Land, the one with dominion over souls.
The God of Death moved its jaw slowly, chewing at something, the motion producing a sound that set one's teeth on edge. Using the special chakra that adult Naruto had channeled to it, it was constructing something. The souls were already present -- but without physical bodies, they could not exist in the living world.
Young Sasuke had lifted his head. His tear-streaked eyes were wide with confusion and alarm. He didn't know what this creature was. He didn't know what it intended. He didn't know what was about to happen.
The God of Death continued its slow, deliberate chewing.
Then it opened its great mouth.
Its tongue extended outward.
Resting on that tongue were several shapes. Gently, carefully, they were set down onto the earth, their outlines growing clear in the sunlight.
They were people.
Four people, lying still.
Their eyes were closed. They lay quietly, at rest, as though sleeping. There was no pain on any of their faces -- only the calm, undisturbed expression of deep sleep.
Young Naruto stared at the four figures now lying on the ground, completely at a loss. One of them looked vaguely familiar to him, but the other three he didn't recognize at all.
Young Sasuke's body went rigid.
He stared. His pupils contracted sharply. It was as though lightning had struck him from above -- he couldn't move. He could barely breathe.
The four people lying before him were Minato Namikaze, Kushina Uzumaki, Fugaku Uchiha, and Mikoto Uchiha -- the versions of them that belonged to this world.
Their souls had just been called back from the Pure Land. They lay in a sleeping state, returned now to the world of the living.
For adult Naruto, accomplishing all of this had required nothing more than a single thought.
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