Naruto One-shots

winter sun

Summary: In the end, Sasuke lost. [one-shot, mostly canon-compliant, Sasuke-centric]

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Sasuke Uchiha was eight and he was alone. He didn't have a family member to take care of him, nor a family that would take him in. He had an inkling as to why—they were all scared that he was another Itachi. They feared that he would wake up one day and kill them all simply because he used to call them family. He despaired at the thought. If he had a family, even one that wasn't his flesh and blood, he would cherish them. He would honor them. He would love them.

But no one wanted Sasuke Uchiha. They wanted him, expected him, to become great, but no one was willing to help him get there. So, Sasuke stewed in agony and sorrow until, eventually, it turned to rage. Sasuke had a family, only one, and that family was dead thanks to a certain someone. Sasuke swore vengeance against his brother, for Itachi had taken the only family that would ever love him.

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Sasuke Uchiha was eleven, and he was loved. The villagers adored him, praised him. They wrote him formal letters, invited him to fancy dinners, and—as disturbing as it was—pushed their daughters towards him. Sasuke looked upon it all with utter disdain. He never went to a single dinner or answered a single letter, and all the daughters received nothing but his glares. People looked at him and whispered, "Look at that brat. Look at how he takes advantage of everyone. Look at how wonderful his life is, how everyone worships the very ground he walks on, and yet he's so ungrateful."

Sasuke scowled at the thought. They wanted him to be grateful? For what? They say that they would stand by him, but where were they when he needed them? He was perfectly capable of standing on his own now. Sasuke Uchiha did not need anyone to protect him. He used to, once upon a time, but no one was there.

Sasuke Uchiha learned to take care of himself.

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Sasuke Uchiha was thirteen, and he was assigned to a team. It was the team of his nightmares. There was a girl—a pretty girl, sure, but pretty didn't mean anything in their world—who looked at him with such admiration that it hurt. Sakura Haruno was going to die, he was sure of it. She was going to die an agonizing death and he wouldn't be able to stop it. Such pure feelings get you killed—Sasuke was one of the lucky ones. He had only been scarred.

There was also a boy. He was stupid, moronic, idiotic, and various other synonyms that implied he, too, would have a short shinobi career. Sasuke, however, knew that Naruto Uzumaki would die differently than their female teammate—he would die in an explosion. In agony, sure, but he would be smiling the whole time. He was just that stupid, and he was the kind of shinobi that Konoha loved. Sasuke could not, for the life of him, understand why everyone hated Naruto as much as they did. But he knows that Konoha was hypocritical in many ways, so he didn't think too much about it.

Finally, there was their leader. He was young and lazy and a bit too forced. He would look at Sakura with a look of amazement when she proved—and continued to prove—that she knew so much that it was frightening, he looked at Naruto with amusement when he came up with his utterly stupid and somehow foolproof plans, and Sasuke...

Well, he looked at Sasuke like he was a disaster waiting to happen. The first time it had happened, Sasuke was genuinely taken aback. It had been a long time since anyone had looked at him that way, and it was just as infuriating as always. Still, Kakashi Hatake was Sasuke's ticket to killing Itachi, so he stuck with him. He held in his anger at Kakashi's blatant distrust and, horrifyingly, pity.