The Third Hokage's voice, weathered yet unwavering, carried across the silent sea of mourners like a steady, deep-toned bell.
"We do not gather today to question the why," Hiruzen intoned, his hands clasped behind his back, his gaze sweeping over the faces of his people. "The shinobi's path is written in duty, and their end is a seal upon that contract, signed in blood for the preservation of the leaf that shelters us all. We gather to affirm that their lives were not currency spent, but seeds planted. In the security of our walls, in the laughter of children who will never know their names, in the very peace we now struggle to hold—their legacy grows."
As he spoke, the persistent, misty drizzle continued to relent. The grey ceiling of cloud thinned, allowing a muted, silvered light to filter down, painting the damp headstones and black-clad shoulders with a faint, solemn glow. The weather was clearing, as if even the heavens were offering a moment of respite for remembrance.
Standing amidst the Uchiha contingent, Renjiro appeared the picture of respectful attention. His posture was straight, his new, clear eyes fixed on the Hokage's distant form.
But within, he was galaxies away. Hiruzen's dignified words washed over him, failing to penetrate the shell of numb bitterness that had encased him since waking with a new curse in his eyes.
'The last time I was in one of these…' his mind whispered, the thought a shard of glass in his gut.
'I was with Hiro.'
He could picture it with cruel clarity: a smaller, less crowded memorial years ago. Now, the memory was a phantom limb, aching with its absence.
Death was greedy. It never took just one. It came in swathes, harvesting connections. Hiro, his brother in all but blood, was the fresh, gaping wound. But the tapestry of loss was broader. Uchiha Kagami, a steady, reliable presence from his first days in the Police Force, a young man who had shown him the ropes with gruff patience—gone, leaving behind a widow and a young, fiercely talented son, Shisui, a future martyr whose fate now felt like a ticking clock on Renjiro's conscience.
Then Kaito, a boisterous former classmate from the Academy, Sora's older brother, whose death felt strangely abstract, a fact reported rather than a life felt ending.
Hiro's death was a visceral amputation. Kagami's was a heavy, guilty responsibility. Kaito's was just… a statistic. The hierarchy of his grief felt like its own kind of betrayal.
The drizzle had fully ceased now, leaving the air clean, cold, and heavy with the scent of wet earth and damp wool. A gentle, tentative tug on the sleeve of his dark jacket pulled him from the morass of his thoughts.
He turned, and for a disorienting second, he looked down into a familiar face. Miwa, his aunt, stood there, her expression a complex map of worry, relief, and deep sorrow. The realisation was a quiet shock.
'Did I grow taller?'
He must have. The last time he'd seen her with any regularity, he'd been shorter. Now, he was qualified to call himself a veteran jonin, and the war had carved inches and years into him that he hadn't noticed. She seemed smaller, more fragile, though the keen intelligence in her dark eyes was undimmed.
"Renjiro," she said, her voice subdued, barely above a whisper against the backdrop of Hiruzen's concluding remarks.
"Aunt Miwa," he replied, his own voice flat.
"I heard you were… injured. Blinded." Her gaze searched his face, lingering on his eyes, which she could now see were whole and focused.
He attempted a dismissive sound, a rough approximation of a laugh that died in his throat. "A temporary setback. The village's medics are… remarkably resourceful."
She didn't smile. She saw right through the brittle facade, the way only someone who had helped raise him could.
"Are you truly fine?" she asked, the question imbued with a depth that went far beyond the physical.
A spark of irrational irritation flared in his chest. He gestured minutely with his chin towards the surrounding crowd—the bowed heads, the tear-streaked faces, the portraits clutched like lifelines.
"Look around, Aunt Miwa," he said, the bitterness seeping through. "Does anyone look fine?"
She flinched, just a tiny tightening around her eyes. "I'm sorry," she said, and she meant it. "I didn't mean… I'm worried about you."
Hiruzen's speech was drawing to a close, his final words hanging in the now-still air about the lighting of lanterns, a symbol of guiding the fallen home, or even letting them go.
A soft murmur began to ripple through the crowd as people shifted, preparing for the next part of the ceremony, some moving to find family, others seeking a moment of solitude.
Miwa, however, did not move away. She stepped slightly closer, lowering her voice further.
"I also heard," she said, her tone dropping into something more intimate and piercing, "that you awakened the Mangekyō. During the war."
Renjiro's internal groan was almost audible. 'This is not a good time for this. Not here. Not now.'
Of course, she knew. As an Uchiha of her generation, she understood the bloody currency of their clan's supreme power better than most. She knew the price tag, and she was looking at him, trying to see the wound that had paid it.
"It happens," he muttered, his gaze sliding away from hers, fixing on a distant, rain-streaked headstone. The memory of his second awakening—the bloody tears, the clawing desperation, the tri-spoke wheel now permanently etched behind his eyelids—rose up like a spectre, haunting the space between them.
As the formal part of the ceremony broke and people began to move with hushed voices, Miwa pressed on, a gentle but relentless current.
"When I first heard you had it, I was… hurt. That you hadn't told me." She admitted it plainly, without accusation.
"Then the news about Hiro came. And I thought… I understood. I assumed that was the cause."
Renjiro said nothing, a silent confirmation she didn't need.
"But the timelines don't add up," she continued, her analytical mind, so like his own, laying out the puzzle.
"Hiro died in the final ambushes, just weeks ago. You've had the Mangekyō for much longer. The rumours place its first use years back, on the Lightning border." She paused, forcing him to meet her eyes again. Her gaze was not angry, but deeply, profoundly concerned.
"So if it wasn't Hiro's death that first awakened your Mangekyō… then what did?"
The question hung in the cool, clear air. It was the question he had avoided for years.
'I should have told her years ago,' he thought, a wave of weariness threatening to buckle his knees. The burden of the lie, atop the burden of his grief, felt suddenly unbearable. He drew in a slow breath, steeling himself. The cemetery, the mourners, the fading light—it was the worst possible place, but perhaps there was no good place for this truth.
"Aunt Miwa, I…"
He was interrupted by a sudden, jarring impact against his side. Someone small and fast had bumped into him, hard.
"Watch it!" a young, irritated voice snapped.
Renjiro's own irritation, already simmering, flared. He looked down, ready to sharply reprimand the careless child, his new Mangekyō itching to activate just to impose a moment of intimidating silence.
But before he could speak, another voice cut through the murmur of the crowd—a woman's voice, firm yet gentle, calling from a few paces away.
"Shisui, that is no way to behave towards strangers. Apologise at once."
Renjiro's head snapped up. His gaze moved from the frowning, dark-haired boy—Uchiha Shisui, Kagami's son, a living reminder of another weight on his soul—to the woman who had spoken. She was weaving through the crowd towards them, her own expression one of mild admonishment and apology.
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