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The Blessed Realm	By : susanna Category: Naruto > Yaoi - Male/Male > Naruto/Sasuke Views: 1746 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 3
Disclaimer: Disclaimer: Naruto, his friends and the world he lives in don't belong to me but to Masashi Kishimoto. I write this story only for my pleasure and I don't make any money with it.

Chapter List
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Chapter One Hundred Twenty Two: Victim, not Perpetrator
Going home Naruto was in a better mood than he had been for a long time. Playing Madara had been fun, and getting Sasuke into situations where he did not know what to reply had been a challenge he enjoyed.
Sasuke was more serious. For him, the training session had been more realistic and less like a game, and a few times Naruto had managed to find sore spots of his soul, mostly by talking of Itachi.
“He would have wanted you to take his eyes,” Naruto had said. “He would have wanted you to claim the full power of the Uchiha clan, and restore its reputation in the ninja world. He would not have made sure that you got the Mangekyou if he had not intended you to take his eyes too.”
By now Sasuke was confident that his parents would have approved of the path he had chosen for himself, but he had never considered Itachi and his intentions. Maybe he would really have wanted him to take his eyes. Maybe he should accept Madara's offer.
So this had been the worst moment for Sasuke, but there had been other, better moments too, moments when he had managed to find questions Madara aka Naruto could not find a reply to. Both of them had had a lot of fun, and a few times the policewoman had told them off, explaining to them that this was not a game but an attempt to teach them interrogation techniques, and that they should take them seriously.
The young social pedagogue had reminded her, however, that both boys had been threatened and intimidated by Madara so that they needed to ridicule him in order to overcome their fear. After this the woman had become more indulgent, even smiling when Naruto came up with a remarkably absurd reply.
People here really had their own techniques of dealing with evil, Sasuke thought. They fought, but they fought with words, and they used ninja tricks: not attacking, but making use of their opponents' attacks, exploiting his mistakes and using his own power against him. He was determined to learn this, and he was quite confident that he had made some progress during this training session.
The next morning it was his turn to play Madara, while Naruto played himself. Wearing the black cloak, which by now had sleeves, a collar and red clouds, brought back memories of his fight against Killerbee, memories he was not proud of, but when he had put on the orange mask he felt like Madara too. He took it off again.
“Wait a moment. I need to think of a strategy,” he said.
“Take your time,” the policewoman replied.
Naruto sat down on the bench, anxiously watching Sasuke, who had hidden behind the mask again, so that Naruto had no idea what he was thinking. Then Sasuke approached him.
“Follow me!” he said. “I'll extract the kyuubi without killing you, so that you no longer have to worry about it. I'll make you master of all the bijuu, and kage of the whole ninja world. United they'll follow your orders, and stop fighting each other.”
Naruto did not have any answer to this, and the policewoman and the social pedagogue were silent too.
“Is that your desire?” the social worker asked. “Being kage of the whole ninja world?”
Naruto could tell that neither he nor the policewoman approved of this desire.
“You also want to be kage of Music Town?” the woman asked. “You know, we are part of the ninja world too. We like to be our own masters, however.”
“Being Hokage of Konoha is enough for me,” Naruto answered. “That's what my father was, and that's what I dream of too.”
From their expressions Naruto could tell that they did not consider this much better than the desire to be kage of all the ninja countries.
“It's not about power,” he explained. “It's about serving my people, and being the first to put his life on the line when the village is in danger.”
The two people still didn't seem to approve. “Let's continue your training,” the woman finally said.
After training, and after finding Sasuke's horse, it was time for their third appointment with the social worker. (It was their lunch break then.) The social worker was pleased to meet them and brought coffee for Sasuke and coke for Naruto.
“So what is it you want to talk about today?” he asked. “How's your training at the police? Everything all right?”
“Training goes well,” Sasuke answered, forgetting to mention that they weren't allowed to go on patrol these days. “I want to talk to you about something else.”
The social worker looked at him expectantly.
“I've thought a lot about what you told us the first time we met: about not prosecuting me for trying to kill Naruto when we were both twelve years old, because I was too young at the time to be held accountable for what I did, and too young to understand what I was doing.”
“Well, yes,” the social worker said, still waiting for Sasuke's thoughts.
“At the time I considered myself strong and grown up, fully able to look after myself, and to decide for myself. Looking back now I think I was a small child indeed, raised in ignorance and loneliness and burning with pain.”
He paused again.
“But in the end I refrained from killing Naruto, even though I was only twelve. In the end I refused to follow my brother's advice. I did not want to be his puppet, and I did not want to be like him.”
“Your brother? What's your brother got to do with it?”
“It was him who murdered our family, and before that he murdered his best friend in order to acquire the Mangekyou Sharingan that gave him unimaginable power. He told me that in order to kill him and avenge my family I needed the Mangekyou too, and that I also needed to kill my best friend. But in the end I didn't do it.”
The shock in the social worker's eyes was still visible. Sasuke had not expected it. He had already told the man that his family had been murdered, and there had already been the silence of a few seconds that usually followed this announcement, so why was he shocked again?
“Did you like your brother?” the man asked.
“I did. But then I hated him.”
“That's understandable.”
“I wanted to kill him. It was my sole desire.”
“That's understandable too. Was he arrested and put to trial?”
“No. They let him go. The authorities of Konoha had ordered him to commit the murder after all. And I no longer hate him. I rather pity him now.”
“You don't have to. Being ordered is no excuse for murder. A man should be able to tell right from wrong, and refuse to obey to an order that's obviously wrong.”
“My brother wasn't a man. He was still a child of thirteen.”
The social worker looked shocked again.
“That's something else.”
“So this is what I want to ask you: Would you have spared him too from being put to trial, and from being punished?”
“Yes, definitely.”
Sasuke had hoped for that answer, still the quickness of its deliverance made him wonder. The social worker misinterpreted his silence:
“How old were you at the time?”
“Seven.”
“I guess it's difficult for you to accept that your brother would have gone out free.”
“It would have been difficult at the time. Now I no longer consider my brother the real culprit, so I don't think that he should have been punished, and I regret that I ever wanted to kill him. - So what would you have done? You would not have pretended that nothing had happened, would you? You do punish thirteen-year-olds, don't you, we have seen it happen at the project we work at on Friday afternoons. When children misbehave they are excluded for several weeks.”
“That's something else,” the social worker said. “That's not murder. I mean, it's normal that thirteen-year-olds sometimes do things they are not supposed to do, and then they get punished in the way you described, but it's not normal that thirteen-year-olds murder their families. With this you have to deal in a different way.”
“So what would you have done?”
“We would have inquired about what had gone wrong that your brother committed such a crime, and then we would have put him into some fosterhome. Maybe we would have found him fosterparents.”
“And what would you have done about me?”
“We would have found fosterparents for you too. Maybe it gives you some satisfaction to hear that it is far easier to find fosterparents for a cute seven-year-old than for a teenager who just murdered his entire family.”
Sasuke didn't care about satisfaction. His feelings were in confusion, and he would not have been able to describe them.
“So having to live in an orphanage would have been the only form of punishment for my brother, if he had committed such a crime in Music Town,” he said.
“Rather the natural consequence of his crime than some form of punishment,” the social worker said. “We do our best that kids have a decent life our orphanages, though living with your parents, or fosterparents, is normally much better of course. Our aim is to prevent the kids from committing more crimes, and to set them on a good path for the future.”
Sasuke considered it. It was what he and Naruto did on Friday afternoons. But these kids, though they were rather difficult, had not murdered anyone.
“In Konoha my brother would have been judged as an adult, if they had cared to put him to trial at all. But they themselves had ordered the murder, and so they had to let him go free.”
“Yes. I'm still in shock about this. Do you have any idea why they didn't give the order to some grown-up man?”
“My brother was stronger than most other ninja, and the only person strong enough to commit the crime. Also, according to our laws, he was a grow-up man, just as everyone who has passed the academy exam and been accepted as a genin.”
The social worker looked blank, and Sasuke could not tell what he was thinking. He wished he could use his Sharingan to read the man's thoughts, but it was not possible.
“I forgot that you're all raised as fighters and made soldiers at a very young age, and that this was done to your brother too. It's considered a crime in all the rest of the world, a way of turning children into killing-machines instead of teaching them how to be human beings. It's much more convenient than employing grown-ups: Children are more obedient, they don't insist on adequate payment, they are more easily intimidated or manipulated, and it's easier to brutalize them than a grown-up person with a well-established system of moral beliefs who might resist and refuse an immoral order, if necessary at the price of their life. Children are not yet able to see through their commanders' manipulations, and they rarely have the courage to resist.”
“Still my brother might have resisted when he was told to murder our parents. Every child knows that this is wrong.”
“Most children can be forced to kill their parents or their friends. They'll do it when they feel that otherwise they themselves will get killed. It's a perfect way to turn them into killing-machines who only respect power and superior strength, killing-machines who'll obey you as long as you're stronger than them, and who feel entitled to do everything they want when they themselves are stronger than their victims.”
Sasuke was silent. He sensed that Itachi's story didn't fit the man's description, as nobody had told him that killing his family was the only way to save his own life. On the contrary: From the beginning it had been clear that being a refugee and a spy at Akatsuki, and then dying an early death was part of the plan. He sought for words to explain this to the social worker, but the man had already continued his speech:
“Your brother was not responsible for his actions. He was thirteen. Those who gave the order and turned him into a murderer are responsible.”
Sasuke didn't answer. Even though the man confirmed what he had tried to convince himself of since he had first heard that Itachi had been ordered to murder the clan he still was irritated by the absoluteness of the man's convictions.
“My brother was not a child. He was grown-up according to the laws of Konoha.”
“He was thirteen. Thirteen-year-olds in Konoha are not more mature than thirteen-year-olds in other parts of the world. They need parents who care for them, they need friends, they need capable teachers, and lots of opportunities to do stupid things without catastrophic consequences. Learning to fight does not make you grow up more quickly.”
Not only Sasuke, but also Naruto felt hurt. They had always considered themselves more mature than people of their own age in Music Town.
“Your brother was not a perpetrator. He fell victim to a horrible crime. In all the countries of the world beyond the ninja countries he would not have been put to trial but been treated kindly. People would do their best to help him leave behind his identity as a child soldier and teach him values that enable him to return to an ordinary, civilized life among ordinary civilized people.”
“How?” Sasuke asked.
“We're still studying their methods, and apparently they themselves are still busy doing research and finding out what works best. It seems they think that there's demons within a child soldier, both from the crimes he committed and from the crimes he fell victim to, and they have rituals to drive the demons our of them, so that they can return to their people. Mostly, however, they treat these kids with care and support to teach them by example how ordinary, civilized people treat each other, and this seems to work.”
Sasuke considered the man's words. He felt uncomfortable with the idea of Itachi being nothing more than an abused child.
“My brother was not a killing-machine,” he said. “He still made his own choices. He decided that I should be spared, for example.”
“That's great and admirable in his situation. Certainly it would have been something to build on if he had survived so that he could have been brought back to an ordinary life.”
Again there was silence. Finally Sasuke took Naruto's hand: “I need to think about all this. We'll contact you again if we have more questions.”
“Do so!” the social worker replied. “It's been a pleasure to talk to you.”

A/N: Thanks again for your reviews and your plusses! You can find my answers at http://www2.adult-fanfiction.org/forum/index.php/topic/14965-blessed-realm/ .It is now possible to access the thread without registration at the forums.
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The Blessed Realm